Journey of a Lifetime
by Shivver
Summary: A normal high schooler with a bright future ahead of her, Traci encounters a man who tells her that she's not who she thinks she is.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note** : I don't know why I feel compelled to put in a note here; I normally don't and let the work stand on its own. Maybe because this story is experimental and different from anything I've done before, I feel like I should include a warning. The core of this story is a tired trope and it's centered around an OC, and it's everything that the experts say that fanfiction writers shouldn't do, but I liked the idea (me and my chameleon arches - when will I ever learn?) so I wrote it anyway. I guess you've been warned.

* * *

"And English class was sooo booo-ring that I got most of this one done," Meg groaned as she flipped through her spiral notebook and thrust it under her friend's nose. "It's not the best, but it's hard to work from memory."

As they walked, Traci peered at the drawing of a tall man standing behind a bar with a towel draped over his shoulder. While it was beautifully drawn, the proportions of the man's face were wrong, and if she hadn't known it was supposed to be Ted Danson, she wouldn't have recognized him. Of course, she wasn't going to say that. "Wow, Meg, this is great!"

Her friend laughed, smacking Traci lightly on the arm. "No, it's not. It's terrible. But I'll redraw it when I get home, on good paper this time and with my _Cheers_ scrapbook in front of me. Oh, and maybe my _Tiger Beat_ will come in the mail today. Leanne showed me hers today, and there's a huge article with lots of pictures!"

Marcy, who had been hanging back chatting with Anne, dashed up and circled around them, walking backwards in front of her two friends. "You have to finish mine first! I gave you that picture of Sam and Diane a week ago already."

"I'm working on it!" Meg whined. "I'm doing it in pastels. It's going to take a while."

Marcy pursed her lips. "Aw, come on! You said a couple of days."

"Did not."

"Did too. I gave it to you after volleyball practice, which was Thursday, and you said you'd have it by Monday."

As the girls continued to argue, Traci dropped back to stroll next to Anne, who grinned at her and murmured, "That's why I didn't vote for Meg for class secretary. She never finishes anything she's started. But don't tell her that."

"Oh, she didn't really want it anyway. She only ran to try to impress Jesse Stevens. She'd rather be drawing anyway, not sitting in boring class meetings." Traci glanced over at the two girls in front. "She's really good at it, though. Wish she'd draw me something."

Anne smirked at her. "Harry Anderson?"

"Oh yes!" Clutching her bookbag to her chest, Traci hugged herself as she grinned. "Judge Harry is just a dream!"

Anne giggled at her friend. "I don't see why you like _Night Court_ so much. Ted Danson over Harry Anderson any day."

Traci wrinkled her nose at that thought. "It's not just Harry Anderson. I don't know. I know it's just a TV show, but I just love it, and I'd love to be Judge Harry."

"Ha! Judge Traci!" Anne nudged her with her shoulder. "Is that what you want to do?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe. Who knows?" She shrugged.

As they came up to Marcy's house, the two other girls, by now giggling together like the best friends they were, turned to Traci and Anne. "Hey, wanna come in?" Marcy called. "We're gonna listen to that Journey album. I figured out where Jack hides it."

"Nah, I gotta go home," Traci answered. "Pam's expecting me to come straight from school today."

"Yeah, I gotta get home, too." Anne shrugged. "See you tomorrow." Bidding their farewells, Meg and Marcy turned in to the driveway while Anne and Traci walked on.

"So, your foster mom is still making you come straight home?"

"Yeah. This time it's 'til my math grades improve." Her shoulders sagged as she rolled her eyes. "I don't know why I signed up for trig. Next year, no more math. Or science. I'll get my AP credits in history and English."

"Want me to come over after I finish my chores? We can do the trig homework together."

"Nah." Traci shook her head, her permed curls bouncing. "It's ok. Pam isn't all that bad. I like her enough. She cares, you know? Jim does, too."

"Still can't call them 'Mom' and 'Dad,' though, huh?" Anne put an arm around her friend's shoulders and squeezed her as they walked.

"No. It doesn't feel right." Knowing she should be more charitable to these kind people who were willing to raise her as their own, she pursed her lips and shrugged. "Not yet."

"Oh, I understand. I still can't call Tom 'Dad,' and Mom's been married to him for two years now. Dad is my dad," she stated with conviction.

"At least you understand. Hey, you know what?" Traci nudged her friend with her shoulder. "Come over after your chores and maybe we can head to the drugstore. If Leanne's got her _Tiger Beat_ , it should be on the shelves. I'll work on my trig as soon as I get home, so that Pam will let me go."

"Sure!" Anne's eyes lit up, and she mumbled, "I hope Mike Larson is working there today."

Traci snorted a laugh. "When are you going to finally go and talk to him?"

"I can't do that!" cried Anne, appalled, coming to a dead stop. She stared at her friend like she had suggested that she throw herself into traffic.

Traci threw her hands up in frustration. "Why not?"

"Because!"

"That's just ridiculous." She shook her head, eyeing her friend with pity. "If you don't, I will."

Anne's jaw dropped, and her mouth twitched soundlessly for a moment. "You wouldn't!"

"Just watch me." Traci held her head high, gazing down her nose at her friend with a supercilious smile. "And then I'll introduce you. Finally get you to _talk_ to him."

"Don't you dare!" Anne groaned.

"Oh, now I have to! You're gonna talk to him, if I have anything to say about it." Traci's emphatic nod was backed by a mischievous sparkle in her eye.

By this time, they had reached Anne's house, and Anne turned to face her friend, hugging herself. She shivered with mixed irritation, appreciation, shyness, and embarrassment. "I don't know if I could. But… oh, I don't know. I've got to go. See you in a couple of hours." She waved and turned to trot up the walkway to her front door.

"Practice what you're going to say to him!" Traci called after her, grinning. She never quite understood why it was so hard for Anne, an otherwise smart and level-headed girl, to talk to boys, and it was so easy to embarrass her about them. But she made sure not to do it too often; she really couldn't risk the friendship of one of the few girls who'd really made her feel welcome when she was a new student in the middle of the fall quarter. She'd just been placed with her new foster family, moving to Pasadena and a new school, and she'd been scared and alone. Anne had made a point of getting to know her, and through Anne, she'd found friends in Meg and Marcy. Over the last half year, they had become an inseparable group, but it was Anne that had helped Traci adjust and cope.

She strolled along, thinking about getting home and dreading her trig homework, when her heavy bag shifted on her back. The strap's seam, which she always tried to remember to have Pam re-stitch, finally gave way. The bag slipped off her shoulder and spilled its contents to the sidewalk, heavy textbooks banging hard against her leg. Letting loose an involuntary, "Ah!" she dropped down to the ground. She knew she wasn't more than bruised, but it had hurt and she clasped her leg.

A few moments later, a shadow crossed over her and an accented male voice asked, "You all right?" A comforting hand touched her shoulder. She looked up into the face of a man squatting down in front her, peering at her in concern.

Traci smiled. "I'm fine. My leg just got bumped, see?" She flexed the leg to show that it moved without any real pain. "I just gotta get my books." Still sitting, she started grabbing the scattered articles into a single pile.

"Oh, that's good, then." The man picked up the book bag and examined the broken strap. "Ah. Fix that right up." He had some kind of foreign accent. Traci hadn't heard many, but she guessed it was British. He stood up and turned his back to her. After she heard a strange buzzing noise persist for a few seconds, he turned back and knelt down again. "Good as new!" He handed the bag back to her.

The end of the strap was now fused to the body of the bag, and she was pretty sure it wouldn't come apart again. "Thanks, mister!" The astonished and delighted look on her face evoked a pleased smile on his.

"Right! Let's get you home then!" He helped her put her things back in the bag and, standing back up, he offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet.

"Thanks a lot, mister! I can manage from here."

"Oh, I'm going your way anyway, and it's a splendid day for a walk." Clasping his hands behind his back, he stood with his feet apart and bowed, indicating with his head that he would walk with her. He continued chatting as they walked. "Not that there are many poor days in Pasadena. Lovely city, this is. How do you like it here?"

The question struck her as a bit odd: she'd been asked that by people who knew she'd just moved to Pasadena, but not by those who assumed she'd lived here all her life. On the other hand, the man seemed a bit odd anyway. He was tall and almost painfully thin, wearing a closely-tailored, crumpled blue pinstripe suit with, of all things, bright red tennis shoes. He had a narrow face that she might have thought handsome if it ever stopped changing for even a second, it was so expressive. Unlike the current fashion of bushy, feathered perms, his hair was short and stuck up on the top of his head. He spoke very quickly, and that, coupled with an accent that sounded like chopped and swallowed Masterpiece Theater, made it difficult for her to understand him. He bubbled with a general enthusiasm similar to her friends' that she had never seen in any other adult.

"Good, I guess," she replied. "I've lived here all my life. Well, in Glendale. I just moved here to Pasadena last year." Traci shrugged. "They're more or less the same."

"Glendale. That's the one with that glorious shopping mall, isn't it? Three stories, lots of little shops, massive food court?" His eyes gleamed with excitement, and Traci, nodding, stared at him in bemusement. She'd never seen a man be enthused about a shopping mall. "Now there's a place you could lose yourself in! But Pasadena's got Caltech. Brilliant scientists there. Best in the world. Spent days just talking to the students. Fascinating research going on. Ever been?"

His conversation was so machine-gunned that Traci was startled when it was turned to her, and she stuttered for a moment. "Um, n-no, not really. I don't think so. We've driven by the campus a few times." Her response was lame to her ears, but she had no idea how keep up a dialogue with this man. "So, um, you like shopping and science?"

"Sure! Well," he drawled, "science especially. Well, that and a lot of other things. I like a little of everything. Or at least I try. Keeps my mind open, my horizons broad. What do you like?"

In speaking with other adults, ones not in her own family, Traci had always felt that they were simply making small talk, but she had the strangest feeling that this man truly cared about what she had to say. He looked at her as they walked - so much so that if he outpaced her (and with his long legs and physical energy, he couldn't help it), he rotated as he walked to keep his eyes on her, even walking backwards in front of her, until he spun back into position beside her - and his eyes shone with eager interest as he listened.

"Oh, I don't know," she said, knowing full well that she was stalling a little. "I like shopping, too. And TV. I'd like to travel. Oh! And reading." Now there was something she liked to do, though she rarely talked about it with her friends. "We're doing _A Tale of Two Cities_ in English class right now, and I love it. I want to read more Dickens when we're done with it."

He broke into a wide grin of approval. "Oh, you do that! I'm a great fan. Good man, he was. A bit stuffy, if you ask me, bossed me around a bit, but very much the explorer, with a fine, sceptical mind." Traci stared at her tall companion in confusion, but he didn't notice. "Definitely read _A Christmas Carol_. Don't just watch the films."

They arrived at Traci's house and he turned towards her as she stopped at the gate. "This is my house. You're kind of weird, mister."

"Oi!" he exclaimed in mock offense. "You take back that 'kind of'!" he demanded with a grin. "You just say what's on your mind, don't you? Cheeky. Don't ever lose that. And I'm the Doctor, by the way."

"Doctor what?"

"Just the Doctor." He stuck out his hand in greeting and she grasped it.

"Okay, Doctor. I'm Traci."

"Pleasure to meet you, Traci." With his hands clasped behind his back, he bobbed a shallow bow and smiled sunnily. "It was brilliant chatting with you!" He turned and strolled down the street.

She watched him until he turned a corner and disappeared from sight. Then it occurred to her, _If he was a doctor, why didn't he check my leg for real?_ It puzzled her momentarily, though she really hadn't been hurt at all, but he'd been nice enough, and she smiled to herself. Letting herself into the house, she headed up to her room and gave him no more thought.


	2. Chapter 2

As Traci savored each bite of the burger (which, she had to admit, was really rather average), she wrestled with the guilt of being in this diner in the first place. She really couldn't afford to eat out, with the bulk of her scholarships going towards her rent and tuition. She just really needed a break from the instant mac 'n' cheese and Cup O'Noodles she had every day. She had eaten so much better when she had lived in the dorms, with its mandatory food service. She'd moved into an apartment because told herself she wanted the "freedom," but now she missed the food, the social life, and, honestly, the real freedom from having to cook, pay bills, and clean house. Her mom had warned her not to leave the dorms, and now the only thing keeping her from going back was not wanting to admit that she'd been foolish.

Still, she'd been pretty successful so far with staying afloat. This was the first time in two months that she'd enjoyed the luxury of a meal out, and there'd been plenty of opportunity. Though she'd had to take out student loans to make it through and was working at the Macy's for as many hours as she could spare from her studies, she'd avoided building and carrying balances on her credit cards, something that none of her friends had managed to do. With any luck, she would graduate and start her real life without that hanging over her head; she already had enough to deal with without that.

Anne leaned way back in her chair, one arm snaked up on the table to tease the remnants of the spaghetti with her fork. "Come on, Traci. He's poison. You know that. You've got to get rid of him." Anne regarded Traci with concern on her face, but she didn't see, her own head bowed over her meal. She played idly with a french fry.

"But I love him." She didn't mean to make that sound whiny, but it did.

"No, you don't. He's comfortable. And he's there when you get home. And he's probably a decent screw. But you don't love him." She deliberately dropped her fork on her plate noisily, to try to startle Traci into a reaction.

Traci ignored her. She really didn't want to think about it, and she knew why. If she actually thought about it, she'd agree with Anne, and she'd have to do something about it. John really was a complete loser. He lived in her apartment rent-free, mooched off her food, didn't have a job or go to school. He was an expert at manipulating her, making sure that she knew he'd be homeless and starving if she threw him out. But to do something about it meant confronting him, starting a fight, putting her foot down. It was so much easier to let things go as they were.

"All he's doing is distracting you," Anne continued as her friend remained silent. "Your grades are dropping. You're exhausted. And he's just sponging up all that you make from working all the time."

"Yeah, yeah." Traci continued to stare at the french fry. She'd heard this all before, and deep down, she knew Anne was right, but she didn't want to admit it. John was getting in the way. Time was running out, though. She had two terms until she got her degree, and she needed to get her life back on track again: finish school with a decent GPA, take the LSAT, start applying for law school, figure out what she was going to do if she couldn't get in. Everything was getting so… urgent.

Anne stared at her friend. They'd been best friends since they were juniors in high school and she knew her moods and attitudes, and right now, Traci was lost. "Hey, now, this isn't like you. What's wrong? What aren't you telling me, girl?"

Traci threw the french fry onto her plate. "There's just so much to do. I guess I'm not ready for college to end yet."

Anne nodded. "I know the feeling. My week's been taken up by getting ready for career fairs and interviews, when I'm not working on my thesis. I'd give anything to be a freshman again. But," and she picked up her fork and waved it at Traci, "that doesn't give you an excuse to let John walk all over you. You didn't have a problem with telling Drew to take a hike. Where's that Traci spirit?"

"Yeah, you're right." And she was. Traci knew it. She just didn't feel very in control of her life right now, but she needed to overcome her fears and move on. This might be just the right thing to get her going. She just wasn't sure. She looked around the diner at anything, anyone other than her friend.

A tall busboy covered in a long apron approached the table. "All done with those?" he asked in a clipped English accent, pointing at Anne's plates.

"Yeah, take 'em, thanks." Anne dropped the fork on the plate. The busboy piled the dishes in his plastic bin and turned to leave.

"Wait," Traci called. "Do I know you?"

The busboy turned only his head back as he retreated. "I'm not from around here." He grinned and vanished into the kitchen.

Traci's brow furrowed in confusion. "Anne. Do busboys in diners normally wear suits and ties?"


	3. Chapter 3

Four years of college, one year of LSATs and applications, and three years of law school, and all Traci could find was a job that said she was a paralegal, but in reality had her doing the work of a glorified secretary. She thought that taking this entry-level job at less-than-industry-standard pay would open doors for her after a while, but it had been two years now and she was still stuck here, doing menial work, not learning anything, and just scraping by in a tiny apartment. She was studying for the bar again and prayed that it would be the lift she needed, since this job certainly wasn't.

Maybe this job wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't stuck in Chicago. It's not that she hated the city… Okay, she had to admit to herself that she hated the city. After growing up in Los Angeles and attending college in Seattle, she just didn't like the Midwest. She was able to stomach it for law school, but now that she was out, she wanted to live somewhere else, anywhere else. Oh, and too cold in the winter! But she had to live where the job was.

At least she had made some friends here. She hadn't found any good friends at work, which was good, since she'd prefer to minimize contact with that job, but she had Lynn and Laura. Lynn was her co-worker Pete's wife, and was a floor manager for one of the big department stores. She was definitely a soulmate, enjoying all the same things that Traci did. Laura was Lynn's friend, and while she wasn't someone that Traci would have gotten close to on her own, the three of them together were unstoppable. And of course, through them, Traci met Lynn's brother, Aaron.

Aaron was really the one thing that was keeping Traci here in Chicago. It wasn't love at first sight. They met at Lynn's family dinner and hit it off really well, finding that they had a lot of interests in common, especially TV shows and movies. They started watching favorite shows together, and Aaron introduced her to hiking and camping, something she'd never bothered to try before. After almost a year of hanging out together, Aaron finally asked her out, and they started dating. She loved him: he was a great guy who she felt comfortable with, and he was devoted to her.

Thus, she found herself wandering a sporting goods store with him, shopping for a new sleeping bag. She couldn't afford to replace her own worn, second-hand equipment, but Aaron had offered to get her a new one, one that could withstand colder temperatures. He'd had a notion of heading north to spend some time skiing cross-country in Minnesota. She wasn't sure it was a good idea; she definitely enjoyed camping and being out in the wilderness, but Aaron seemed to be getting interested in experiences that were more extreme.

An hour later, they were sitting at a cafe across the street from the shopping mall, scarfing down overpriced food. Traci knew that Aaron was eager to get back to shopping and ate her meal with more speed and enthusiasm than she felt. Glancing up, she saw that Aaron had stopped eating and was looking at her with concern.

"Whampf?" she said through a mouthful of noodles.

"Okay, Trace. I can tell something's up. You've been mooning around for a while now, and your heart's not in it today." He leaned back in the booth, though he continued to idly poke at his meal with his fork. "What is it?"

"'Snothim." She tried to chew through the noodles and swallow them as fast as she could.

"It's not nothing. It's something. And if I'm right, it's something major." He put down his fork and leaned forward. "Come on. You can tell me. I can take it."

Swallow. "You're going to get mad."

His smirk was both tender and sarcastic at the same time. "Give me some credit, will you? And anyway, let me decide for myself. What's wrong?"

Traci took a deep breath, then spit out her words like she feared that if she didn't speak them quickly, she couldn't say them at all. "I want to move back home, back to California. I hate my job. I hate this city."

Aaron straightened in surprise. It took him a moment to find his tongue. "One thing I love about you: you always say exactly what you're thinking. I knew you weren't fond of Chicago, but I didn't know it was that bad." Leaning his elbow on the table, he rested his chin in his palm and gazed at the woman across from him.

"Yes. That's the problem. I mean, this place is driving me crazy." She wrapped her arms around herself and shrugged. "I feel like it's crushing the life out of me. If I'm going to be living on mac and cheese for the rest of my life, I'd at least like to be somewhere I like." She plopped backwards in her chair, frustrated. "I don't know."

"So, then…" Aaron hesitated. He seemed to be wrestling with his response to her, wanting to be sympathetic without encouraging her to move away. "What do you want to do? Or, at least, what are you thinking?"

"I don't know! But I have to do _something_. This city just isn't _home_ for me." She shrugged again. "I feel out of place here, like I'm an outsider. I need to go home."

Aaron frowned. "Home where? Your family's moved to North Carolina, and anyway, you never liked Pasadena. Or Seattle. You've always said that. California's only idyllic because you're not there right now."

He was right. She'd never really liked any place she had lived in, but she wasn't about to admit it, so she changed the subject. "There's gotta be something out there for me, something more than just dragging myself to work everyday and filing someone else's cases. I want to practice law. That's what I spent three years preparing for!"

"You can practice law right here." He gestured at the floor with both hands. "You just need to pass the bar, and that's what you're working on right now. If you move to California, you'll have to throw out everything you've learned here. You'll be back at square one."

She looked him directly in the eyes as she replied, "At least I'll be happy."

He shook his head. "No, you won't. I know you, Trace. In six months, you'll be working in some low-paying job, stuck in the middle of studying for the bar _again_ , and wondering if life would be better in Austin, or Atlanta, or New York. You need to stay here and see this through."

She poked at her noodles, then looked him right in the eyes. "So, I guess this means you won't even consider coming with me."

"You've made that decision already." It was statement, not a question.

"No, I haven't. But I need to know what your intentions are, and what I can expect. It's not going to be easy. I can't even find a job to go to, so I'd just be moving blind." She surveyed his attitude, and every indication was that his thoughts were changing from concern to anger.

Breathing deep, he spoke through clenched teeth, his voice barely above a whisper. "My family's here, and my career's going well. It's paying for both of us, you know. You want me to give that up, to go traipsing across the continent chasing what you imagine will be a better life?"

"No. I want to know how you see us, and what you might be willing to do. How serious are we? What's really important to us?" She held his gaze for a few moments, but then couldn't look at him, so she studied the edge of the table in front of her.

He ran his fingers through his hair. "I don't believe you want me to give this all up! You're forcing me to decide between you and the rest of my life?"

"No!" Traci leaned across the table and grasped one of his hands. "I'm not asking you to do anything of the sort. I just want to know what you think, what the possibilities are."

Aaron snatched his hand out of hers, and she startled back. "I need to think about this. I need to…" Abruptly, he stood up and fled the cafe.

Traci pursed her lips and stared at her plate. That wasn't as bad as she had expected it would be - she was gratified he took the time to even try to understand how she felt - but from reading his unconscious signals, she felt that he was more likely to break it all off and tell her to leave than to come with her. She wasn't sure which she preferred.

She still had some noodles left, so she devoted herself to cleaning her plate, after which she would figure out how she would track Aaron down. Or she'd grab the bus home. As she ate, more out of trying to ignore her troubles than anything else, her eyes wandered about the cafe, seeing but not seeing the other patrons at their tables. However, one figure caught her eye, a thin man in a blue suit, wearing dark-rimmed glasses and reading a thick paperback. She gasped as she realized that she recognized him. _The bus boy at that diner five years ago, and… that guy that helped me with my bag. In high school._ She still had that bag - it was worn and ratty after years of use in high school and college, but the strap was as strong as ever. There was no way she could ignore the incredible coincidence of encountering him for the third time in as many cities.

Slurping up the last few noodles, she grabbed her paper plate and her purse and, leaving her table, tossed her trash in a garbage can. She then strode over to the man's table and slipped into a chair across from him. Looking up from his book, his eyes twinkled in recognition and he smiled, a friendly grin with lots of teeth. "Oh, hullo!" That British accent again. He clapped his book closed and set it on the table, then removed his glasses and dropped them on the cover. "Beautiful day, isn't it?"

"You. I remember you. Why do you keep showing up?" Her brow furrowed. She wasn't angry, just suspicious.

"Ohhh, I just get around. You know. I travel a lot." The way he tilted his head back and to the side as he spoke was very peculiar.

"This isn't 'just getting around.' I've seen you before in Pasadena and Seattle, and now in Chicago. That's a hell of a lot of coincidence. You following me or something?" She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, glaring at him.

"Not as such, no." He looked amused.

"Then what 'as such?' Why we keep meeting, all across the country?" She was sure he was lying about not following her. Though, to be honest, if he was following her, he was doing a great job of it, only being spotted three times in, what, seven years? She then realized that he looked exactly the same as he did when she first met him nearly ten years before. He showed not a single day of age over the intervening years, and he certainly seemed attached to blue pinstripe suits.

"Well, mostly, trying to get to know you a bit better." He sniffed, his face crinkling for a brief moment.

She frowned. "You get to know people better by _talking to them_ , not by stalking them!" She was aware that people at the nearest tables were turning to stare.

"We've met three times. That's hardly stalking, is it? But never mind that! Look at you, all grown up! How are you liking Chicago? Grand city. Only been here a few times, many, many years ago, no matter how you count it." He stared out the cafe window with a rapt expression.

Traci's annoyance bubbled to the surface. "Hey! Pay attention to me." His gaze swiveled back to her, and his nonchalance infuriated her even more. "Look, mister -"

"Doctor."

She rolled her eyes. "Doctor," she drawled, sarcasm dripping from both syllables. "What do you want with me?"

This time, he looked her straight in the eye, with only interest and no amusement on his face. "Honestly, trying to learn a bit more about you."

Her eyes widened in disbelief. "What? You're too old for me." As the words tumbled out of her mouth, she realized that wasn't what he meant, though she had no idea what he _did_ mean.

The Doctor grinned as if he were enjoying some private joke. "Oh, you have no idea. But!" He straightened up and planted both hands on his thighs. "You have a lot of questions for me, and I want to talk to you, so, what do you say we take a turn down the street? Too crowded in here."

The prospect of going on a walk with a stranger set her on her guard, but he puzzled her so much that she readily agreed. _As long as I keep us to the public places, it should be okay._ Rising to his feet, he deposited the book and glasses into a jacket pocket - and yet the pocket remained flat against his body; that was really weird - then pulled on the long brown overcoat that had been draped over the back of his chair. He offered her a hand up with polite gallantry. "Miss Traci?" She accepted it and rose, stringing her purse over her shoulder.

She needn't have worried about keeping to the public places: the Doctor showed no sign of leading her down any dark alleys or into secluded parks. He did, however, outpace her, just like he had the last time they'd walked together, in Pasadena. She had to ask him to slow down, so that she would have breath for talking, and he immediately altered his speed to match hers.

"Okay." Her tone betrayed her exasperation with this strange man. "So, now that we're walking, what is it you want with me?"

"I'm trying to figure out who you are."

She snorted. "I've been trying to figure that out all my life. Good luck."

"No, that's not what I mean." He tugged at his ear with a hand. "Let me ask you: do you sometimes have recurring dreams of somewhere far away, another world, perhaps, where you're doing things you've never done before, knowing people you've never met?"

Traci stopped in her tracks. How could he possibly have even guessed about the vivid dreams she sometimes had, in which she was clad in long red robes, training, like a monk, in a city of bright, tall towers under an orange sky? That in the dreams, the people she called "Mother" and "Father" were always the same two people, but weren't anyone she'd ever seen before?

He peered at her with heartfelt sympathy in his eyes. "You do, don't you?" His tone was very gentle.

She backed away from him a step. "How would you... Who _are_ you?"

"I'm the Doctor." He bit his lip, then shook his head. "No, that doesn't mean a thing to you. Okay. Let me explain, but I'll warn you that this is going to be hard to believe." Before he continued, he nodded at her, and, intrigued to hear what he had to say, she felt compelled to return that nod. "Traci. I'm not from this planet. I'm an alien, and I believe you are the same species as I am."

Traci simply stared at him. After about ten seconds, she laughed, a high, nervous giggle. "Okay, I get it. Someone's playing some stupid joke on me and paid you to do this, right?" His expression remained deadpan as he waited patiently for her to come to grips with what he just said. "No, look, that's just ridiculous. You can't expect me to believe something that's so completely ridiculous." He continued to stand there watching her, and a shiver ran down her spine. "Okay, c'mon, joke's over."

"It's not a joke, Traci. It's the truth." His voice was low, quiet, and utterly serious.

Pressing her lips in a thin line, she crossed her arms, her eyes narrowed with disgusted disbelief.

"Here, let me show you. Give me your hand."

Frowning at the odd request, she held her hand out, curious as to what he might have to show her. Taking it, he stepped forward and pressed her hand against his neck so that she could feel his pulse. His skin was cool, shockingly so. She held her hand there for ten seconds, then snatched it away, cradling it like it had been stung. "What is _wrong_ with your heart?"

"Two beats at a time, eh? Two hearts." He motioned at his chest to indicate their locations.

"No!" she protested. He nodded at her, his wide eyes locked with hers. "No. No!" She backed away a few steps more, fighting the rising panic clenching her stomach.

The Doctor held his hands up in front of him, in a silent plea for her to not flee. "Really. Don't worry. I'm not going to harm you. I'm a good alien."

The little quip broke the tension. She stopped backing away, but she still stared at him and clutched the hand that had felt the alien heartbeat against her stomach. "So, uh, what are you? What planet do you come from?" To her ears, they sounded like the stupidest questions she'd ever asked anyone.

He nodded and pronounced his race and origin slowly and carefully. "I'm a Time Lord. I come from a planet called Gallifrey."

"Okay. Okay." She breathed deeply and nodded a few times. "Let's pretend I believe you, and for the record, I don't. I'm not like you. I don't have two hearts."

Running a hand through his hair, the Doctor nodded. "Now, see, that's a little harder to explain. You've been hiding here as a human, and to do that, you changed your biology, from Time Lady to human, so you look and feel completely human. But you, your memories and your personality, were also locked away. That's why you can't remember your life as a Time Lady."

Staring down at the ground, she tried to imagine being anyone other than herself, and it was simply impossible. She was Traci, born and raised in Southern California, educated in Seattle and Chicago, and now aspiring to be a lawyer. Sure, she'd had those street psychics tell her that she was a reincarnated Cleopatra or Queen Elizabeth or whatever famous woman they could cook up, and while it was entertaining to imagine that, she couldn't picture herself actually being one of those people, being someone else. Closing her eyes for a moment, she summoned up enough strength to keep her voice steady and not flee in panic.

"Look, Doctor, whoever you are, whatever you are. I don't know what's going on here, but whatever it is, you've got the wrong person. I'm just me, okay? I'm not some Time Lady or whatever you said. Go find someone else to be an alien." She spun on her heel and stalked off.

Behind her, the Doctor jammed his hands in his pockets in frustration and jogged off after her. As he circled in front her, walking backwards to stay there, he tried to catch her gaze. "There's no one else. It's you who's a Time Lady. You just don't remember because you were given new memories so that you would fit in here on Earth." She refused to look at him, so he changed his tactic. "Here, answer me this. Tell me about your life when you were ten years old."

She stopped in her tracks. "When I was ten? What for?"

"Humour me."

She glowered at him, then rolled her eyes. "Fine. Uh, let me think." She frowned. "That would be 1977? I was living in Glendale. Both of my parents were still alive. My dad's name was Michael, and he was a car mechanic. My mom's name was Sarah, and she was a nurse. I went to Mark Keppel Elementary School, in... fifth grade? I'd have to count to be sure."

Drawing a deep breath, he hesitated a moment before he asked his next question. "Who were your friends, and where did you hang out? What kinds of things did you do with them?"

She inhaled to speak, but faltered when she realized she couldn't remember a single friend or anything she used to do when she was a kid. "Oh, I don't remember. It's been a while since I thought about them."

"All right, that's fair. Tell me about your birthday party that year." When Traci frowned, unable to picture it, he pressed further. "It was your tenth. You must have had one. Did you have it at one of those restaurants with the ice cream and games and clowns? Who came to it? Did you receive any great presents?"

Frustrated, Traci shook her head violently, as if she were trying to clear her mind of fog. "Yeah, I'm sure I had one, but that was a long time ago, and it's hard to remember with you yelling at me like that."

"No, Traci." The pity in his voice made her look up at him. "You don't remember because there's nothing to remember. The only memories you have are facts and figures simply meant to give you a history. The details, those day-to-day experiences and the people who were your family and friends, aren't there."

Traci exploded. Stomping forward, she shoved him in the chest with both hands and screamed in his face, teeth bared. "How dare you? How dare you say that my memories, my _life_ isn't real? How dare you come up to me and say these horrible, awful things? I don't care who or what you are! Get away from me!" She whirled and stomped off, in what direction she didn't care, ignoring the pedestrians on the sidewalk gawking at the altercation.

The Doctor followed her. "Traci, wait!" She kept going. "Traci! I know it's hard. Believe me, I know. It happened to me, too, and I couldn't believe that my life hadn't been real, either."

She spun back, both fists clenched. "How could you possibly say those things if you knew what it was like?"

"I said them because you deserve to know the truth about yourself." She turned away from him, but didn't move, her shoulders heaving as she panted. "It's all true. Everything I said."

"I don't believe you," she growled through her teeth.

"I know." The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck. "If you want, I can tell you what I've been able to work out about you so far."

"Yeah, go ahead," she mumbled without turning around.

"From what I've been able to find out, you were fostered to your family when you were a junior in high school, right?" He interpreted her lack of response as an affirmation. "A bit old to be fostered. That's probably your first real memory as a human. That puts you at about age 17, which is just about the right relative age for graduating from your academy. So, you were just officially sanctioned as a Time Lady when you used a chameleon arch to become human here on Earth. You're probably at about a hundred years old now."

Traci whipped around. "A hundred years old! I'm twenty-six! Rude!"

The Doctor ran his hand through his hair, frustration clouding his expression. "I really haven't done a very good job of explaining all of this, have I?"

"No, you haven't!" Glaring at him, she crossed her arms and cocked her head.

"Okay. Let me try again?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You have one minute," she growled, checking her watch.

"What? But I…" He tugged on his ear. "Okay…" His normally quick speech sped up even more, but words were sharp and precise. "You're a Time Lady. I'm a Time Lord. We come from a planet called Gallifrey, near the center of this galaxy. We can live for hundreds, even thousands of years, and we're called what we are because we can see the whole of time: past, present, and all possible futures. You changed yourself into a human using a technology called a chameleon arch, as far as I can tell, when you became an adult, which is around ninety years old for us, but is around the late teens for humans." He paused to make sure he had her attention, looking directly into her eyes. "I've come to talk to you about it, because, if you want, you can change back and become a Time Lady again."

Traci tried to understand what he was saying, but the words somehow only barely made sense to her. Everything he said was just too ridiculous to believe. He was an alien, saying that she's an alien, and that they live for thousands of years? That they come from a planet light-years away? That they can see time, whatever that means? She stared at him, unsure of what to say, or even think.

"No, that's just… What?... I mean… You can't…" She realized she was babbling only to fill the silence.

At a loss for ideas, the Doctor glanced around the Chicago street, his tongue flicking over his lips as he thought. He tapped his chin with a finger, then wagged it at her. "How about I prove it all to you? I'll take you up into space in my, er, spaceship, and show you the universe that you came from."

"Oh, ho! You can't possibly think I'm that stupid." She backed away from him, shaking her head with a wary smile on her face.

"What?" The Doctor appeared completely stunned by her implication that he meant her any harm. "No, I mean it," he pled. "Really. My spaceship. I can really take you into space."

Wagging a forefinger on each hand, she shook her head and glanced around to appraise the situation around her on the sidewalk. "No way, buster. I'm not following you anywhere. I'm not leaving this nice, busy street."

"You don't have to. It's right over there." He motioned at the buildings across the street. She wasn't sure what he was pointing at. Was one of those buildings a spaceship? "Come on." He jammed his hands in his pockets and strode down the sidewalk to a crosswalk, his long brown coat flaring behind him. Curiosity got the better of her, and she followed, making sure there were plenty of people around her who would hear her screams.

In silence, they crossed the busy road, then he led her to an alley. "I know you don't want to leave the street, but you can see from here." Leaving her standing on the sidewalk, he pulled a key out of his pocket as he walked into the alley and up to a large blue phone booth- no, the sign at the top proclaimed it to be a "Police Public Call Box," whatever that was. He unlocked the doors on the front, then pushed them both wide open and stepped back so that she could see inside.

Her jaw dropped as she peered into a huge chamber beyond the doors, a room far larger than the outside of the box itself. It seemed to be at least sixty feet deep, with a round table structure in the middle with a glass column extending upwards beyond the lintel of the door, since she couldn't see the ceiling of the vaulted chamber from where she stood. Without taking her eyes off the box, she moved from one side of the alley to the other, and the parallax proved that it wasn't just painted inside the box. _It's some kind of illusion_ , she thought. _Just some weird, intricate illusion. It can't possibly be real._ She then realized she had unconsciously walked up to box to see it better. It was real. This phone booth thing, not even six feet wide, contained a room that was far larger than her apartment, and she could see a hallway leading out the back.

"How does it do that?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

"She's dimensionally transcendental."

With one eyebrow cocked at the unfamiliar term, she turned to stare at him. He was grinning at her, obviously delighted at her confusion and proud of his strange… box, ship, whatever it was.

"It means that the interior exists in a different dimension than the exterior. She's called a TARDIS, which stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

Traci wasn't sure if that explanation made the concept any clearer at all, but it didn't matter. "Can I go inside?"

"Please."

Hesitantly, she stepped inside then wandered up the ramp towards the center, twirling as she walked to look all around at the huge room. At the top of the ramp, she gazed at… what it was, she had no idea. It was like a hexagonal altar in the center of a temple, except it was covered with a mess of knobs, buttons, switches, tubes, levers, wheels, pipes, bells - all manner of mechanica. Crowning it was a glass column that extended to the high ceiling, with narrower glass tubes inside. It made no sense to her at all. There were no labels, even in an alien language, to describe what anything did. If this was the flight deck, there was no window, no way to see where this "ship" was flying to. How could a ship be a phone booth anyway? Would all the shops be blasted away when it took off?

The creak of the doors closing and the click of the latch startled her, and she jumped and whirled. The Doctor pulled off his overcoat and tossed it onto one of the tree-like support struts with a practiced motion. "Don't worry. If you want to leave, the door's not locked. I'm not forcing you to do anything you don't want to do."

Traci eyed the closed door. She could walk out at any time, but she knew she was already too far gone; she had to see where this rabbit hole went. Scrubbing over her eyes with her hand, she looked away from the only exit and faced the alien. "So, um, this is your spaceship?"

He strode up the ramp and stopped in front of her, his hands clasped behind his back. "Yes."

"And this is…" She waved her fingers at the centerpiece.

"That's the console. The flight controls." Excited, he circled around, patting various parts. "Helmic regulator. Gravitic anomaliser. Monitor. Handbrake. Thermal buffer. Gyroscopic stabiliser…"

"Doctor!"

"Oh, sorry." He came to an abrupt stop and clasped his hands behind his back again. He seemed to be barely suppressing his eagerness to show her his spaceship.

She stared at the jumbled console, her hands clasped at her stomach as if she were afraid of touching and breaking something. "This is the cockpit, then." She looked around again at the walls of the chamber. "How do you fly this thing if you can't see out the front? If it has a front. Which way is the front?"

His lips curved into an amused smile. "You don't 'fly' it, like you're thinking. I can take you on a short trip, if you like. Show you how it works. Show you the universe."

She could see in his eyes not only his earnest desire to introduce her to the cosmos, but also his own intense fascination with traveling and exploration. Whatever her own reservations about the proposal, his excitement was overwhelming and she didn't know if she could refuse him if she wanted to. Trying not to betray her curiosity, she forced her voice to sound disinterested. "Okay. A short trip. That sounds fine."

"Fantastic!" He began turning knobs, flipping switches, and pushing buttons all across the panel in front of him. Hopping around to the other side of the console, he slid the vidscreen around with him and stared at its display as his fingers danced over what looked like a computer keyboard from the 1970s. He then snagged a lever on the other side of the panel from him with a finger and held it up while he thumbed a nearby dial, then stretched a long leg to toggle another with the toe of his red sneakers. After more antics in a similar vein, finally, he flashed an excited grin at her that was set to split his face from ear to ear, then threw a lever that looked like an airplane throttle. The entire chamber lurched, knocking Traci off-balance. As she grabbed at the console for support, she noticed that the Doctor had braced himself out of habit. The glass column started pumping up and down, emitting a horrible repetitive groaning noise, similar to the sound her younger foster brother made when he tried (and soon abandoned) learning to play the viola.

"Not exactly a smooth ride," Traci observed drily.

The Doctor grinned back at her. It was obvious that traveling in his ship exhilarated him, every time.

In about fifteen seconds, the ship grew still and silent, and the glass column stopped moving. Traci continued to cling to the console, her eyes flicking about, wary of the first sign of the ship starting to bounce around again. "That was it?"

The Doctor flipped a few switches in what Traci assumed was a post-flight procedure. "Yup-ah. Take a look." He gestured at the wooden doors of the call box.

Straightening up, Traci peremptorily dusted herself off, then, glancing once more at the Doctor, strode down the ramp to the door. She put a hand on the latch, then hesitated. There was no way that they could have traveled anywhere significant in just a few seconds. This weird man was pulling her leg. She didn't know how he made this phone booth thing bigger on the inside, or how it shook so much, but she just knew it hadn't moved appreciably. But why would this stranger go through all this trouble for a stupid prank? Nothing here made any sense. _Okay, fine_ , she thought, _let's just pretend. What kind of "alien" world did he take me to?_ A tiny part of her mind was imagining a fantastic vista that lay on the other side of the door, with a purple sky and blue trees and green bug-eyed monsters, while the vast majority of it expected the drab Chicago street she had been standing on minutes before. Rolling her eyes, she yanked the door open… and nearly fell out of the ship. Her breath caught in her throat, and she grabbed the door jamb and held on tight.

Her vision was filled with the scintillating swirling clouds of a nebula floating in deep space. Bright stars shone through the swathes of reds, oranges, and blues. Sticking her head out a little, she could see space beyond the edges of the nebula: clouds of distant stars from whatever galaxy she might be in stretched up and to the right, while below, the inky blackness was filled with a myriad of tiny pinpoints of starlight.

She didn't know how long she had stood there staring when the Doctor spoke again, directly behind her. "Brilliant, isn't it?' His voice was low and reverent.

She tried to say something poignant and deep, but all that came out was a "nguh." She swallowed, then turned towards him, knowing she couldn't say anything coherent with her field of vision completely filled with that nebula. "It's just amazing." She tapped the door jamb behind her with one hand. "How are we not dead?"

"The TARDIS protects us." He glanced up at the frame of the door, his bright eyes shining with appreciation for the ship's care.

Unable to resist the wonder splayed out behind her, Traci turned to gaze out at the whorls of dust and gas again. "Where are we?"

"Humans call it the Crab Nebula. A thousand billion miles from Earth." The word "billion" burst from his lips. "The remnant of a supernova."

Science had never been Traci's forte - to be honest, she didn't remember a concrete word from her high school classes - but she was pretty sure that none of this made sense, that she couldn't possibly be this far from Earth. "How did we travel a thousand billion miles in fifteen seconds? I thought you couldn't break light speed, or something like that?"

The Doctor grinned. "You can, but humans can't, not yet anyway. We didn't travel like that, through space. We went through the time vortex. The TARDIS dematerialised - disappeared," he clarified as Traci looked up at him and frowned at the unfamiliar term, "We travelled through the time vortex, and rematerialised here."

"The time vortex? What's that?"

Gazing absently out at the nebula, he traced his upper lip with his tongue. "It's a, well, a dimension, I suppose you could call it, a different dimension that connects all points of space and time. The TARDIS can pretty much go anywhere through it."

Biting her lip, Traci leaned her head against the jamb of the TARDIS door. The proof that she'd traveled across the universe splashed across her entire field of vision, but she understood nothing else. She knew what a vortex was, but what did that have to do with time? What did the Doctor mean by a different dimension, and how would that help them travel here so quickly? And a voice in the back of her mind that she was trying to ignore kept wondering how any of this proved that she wasn't who she thought she was.

"What's wrong?"

The Doctor's gentle voice told her that he sensed her discomfiture, and she decided to concentrate on understanding one thing at a time. "I... I just don't get it. The dimension thing, the time vortex. What does that mean?"

The Doctor drew a deep breath to launch into a explanation, then, pausing, he laughed at himself. "I was about explain, but you already know how that would have gone. I can run my gob without saying much of anything. Let me try again." He scrubbed a hand down over his mouth as he thought. "The time vortex is a bit of a shortcut. It's like cutting across a park rather than walking around it: saves you time and effort. The thing is, it borders all points in time and space, so you can go from anywhere through the time vortex to anywhere. You just need a way to get into it."

She nodded slowly as she tried to digest the information. "And that's the TARDIS."

"That's right."

"And it just disappears from wherever it is, into this time shortcut, and reappears somewhere else?"

"Yup," he replied, popping the "p".

Traci frowned. "But you said time as well as space. Does that mean this ship can travel in time as well?"

The Doctor nodded. "There's a reason we're called Time Lords."

"That's just ridiculous." She turned her back on the universe and walked back up the ramp to the console.

Jamming his hands in his pockets, the Doctor loped after her as he spoke. "It's the truth. Shall I take you somewhen to prove it?"

She buried her face in her hands. It was too much to cope with, and she was aware of an ache blossoming just behind her eyes. "No. Take me home, Doctor. Please."

"Right." Turning on his heel, he returned to the doors to close them, then bounded up the ramp to the console. After a flurry of activity, he sent the ship bouncing on its way. Traci leaned against the railing, which had chunks of foam tied around it as cushions, and bowed her head for the entire ride. As the ship came to a stop, the Doctor joined her, putting his arm around her shoulders. "It's a bit much, isn't it? I'm sorry, but I thought you should know, and it was the best way to show you the truth. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," she lied. Everything was spiraling out of control, and she hated that feeling. "Look, leave me alone, okay? I just want to go home. I… I'll talk to you tomorrow."

Traci wrenched herself away from him and ran down the ramp. It occurred to her as she grabbed the door latch that he could have lied about where they had traveled and that she was running out into the cold vacuum of space, but the door opened on the same Chicago alley that she had been standing in only a few minutes before. She dashed out to the street and stood staring at the skyscrapers towering above her and the crowds of people flowing around her. She'd never seen the city like this before. Compared to the splendor of the nebula in deep space, it was ugly and gray and… _mundane_ , and yet at the same time, it was solid and real and comforting. It welcomed her, protected her from that strange man and stranger spaceship. The wheezing sound of the TARDIS filled her ears, and she whipped around in time to see it fade into nothingness. Her lunch threatened to come back up, and she dashed off, hoping that the random direction she chose would get her closer to home.


	4. Chapter 4

Traci didn't sleep much that night. Her head was too full of unearthly ideas and nebula dust to think straight, and when she closed her eyes, all she could see was that alien standing in his space-time machine. When fatigue finally overcame her, that old dream, of grand halls, dusty tomes, and orange skies, came to her unbidden. The dream felt more real to her than her normal life: she held the Laws of Time in her hands, and the universe prospered under her guidance. Upon waking, she lay in bed for a while, struggling to remind herself which world was the real one.

While short, the sleep cleared her mind, and she was better able to think about what she had been told the day before. After throwing on her robe, she made herself some coffee and toast, and sat at her kitchen table to eat and ponder. If she could trust everything the Doctor had told her - and while he wasn't exactly the best at explaining things or relaying details, there had been no indication that he wasn't trustworthy - she was an alien masquerading as a human, and she originally came from a distant planet, where she had just finished her schooling. Apparently, she had some time-related abilities, but she had no idea what they might be. _I have time superpowers_ , she thought, then laughed out loud, the cackle high and tinged with hysteria. _I'm cracking up._

Maybe she was. Maybe what she saw out of the doors of that spaceship was just a hallucination. Maybe she dreamed up the whole encounter with that Doctor guy. But she could probably go back and forth on this all day and never figure it out. The only reasonable thing to do was to assume that everything she saw and heard yesterday was true and figure out what it all meant. It was the only way to deal with it, and if, in the end, she concluded that it was all a figment of her fragmenting imagination, then… she would deal with that when it happened.

So how could she sort it all out? It was only natural for her to fall back on her law training. She pulled over a pad of paper and a pen and began to write, first a list of what she knew, and then a list of questions she needed answers for. _This time, I'm going to be ready for him, and make sure he tells me everything I need to know._ She spent over an hour, thinking and writing, and once she was satisfied with her notes, she dressed herself and headed out. Somehow, she knew he would find her wherever she chose to go, and she really didn't want him invading her apartment.

Traci was not disappointed. She spotted the Doctor in his long brown overcoat, standing in the small park about a half a mile from her apartment. His hands jammed in his pocket, he was watching the children playing a game of tag among the play structures. His back was to her, and she was tempted to slip away, to flee from this odd man and his offer of a new life, but she couldn't. She wasn't sure if she was afraid of the man himself or what he represented, but she had to find out everything, to know what it was all about. Clasping her purse tightly to her body, she willed her feet to move and strode across the grass. He must have heard her approach, for he turned when she reached him. A bright smile spread across his face.

"Ah! Good morning, Traci! How are you?"

"Hello, Doctor. I'm doing as well as can be expected." She couldn't bring herself to smile, so she kept her expression business-like.

"Ah, yes. Quite a lot to take in, isn't it? You've plenty of questions, I expect?" He tugged on his ear.

"I do." She reached in her purse and pulled out her notepad, flipping it open to her list.

At the site of the pad, the Doctor grinned broadly. "A list! No less than I expected from you."

Traci's eyes narrowed as she peered at him from under a furrowed brow. She couldn't decide if he was mocking her. "The only way to make sure I don't miss something," she murmured in a tight voice.

"Well, then, fire away." He seemed completely oblivious to her suspicions, and she abandoned that train of thought, to pay attention to her primary concerns.

"Ok, first." She eyed him, holding his gaze for three seconds before speaking. "What's a police public call box?"

The Doctor threw back his head, laughing. "A fine first question! They used to be all over England for the first half of this century, so that people who needed help could use the phones in the boxes to call the police. Don't have them now, mostly. They were phased out in the 1970s."

"So why does your spaceship look like one?"

"It's a disguise!" He seemed very proud of its ingenuity, and with a sarcastic expression, she shifted her weight to the other leg and cocked a fist on her hip. "No, really. The TARDIS has a chameleon circuit, which, when she lands, calculates the optimal disguise for it to blend into her surroundings. She then assumes the shape of a police box."

One eyebrow went up. "That's not much of a disguise."

"The circuit's been a bit faulty, going on a few years now." He shrugged. "Besides, at least I can always find it again. Hard to remember where you've parked when your motor looks different every time. What if it chose a park bench? Which one of them is the right one?" He gestured towards the numerous benches around them. "Is that woman over there sitting on your TARDIS?"

Traci blinked. She wasn't quite sure how you would enter a park bench spaceship and had to remind herself that this conversation was likely to get far more surreal before it was over.

"O-kaay," she drawled, then inhaled deeply before consulting her notebook. "So. You've been following me around." That was a statement, not a question.

"No, I haven't. Well," he drawled, glancing up at the sky, "not really. Well, perhaps a little. I've checked up on you now and again. A couple of times. A handful, really."

Frustrated by his equivocation, Traci shifted her stance and cocked a fist on her hip. She realized that her questions needed to be specific and to the point, or he would just dance around them. "Just these three times, then? When I was in high school, that time in the diner, and yesterday?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish. "Well, no, not quite. I've seen you three times other than those."

The admission didn't surprise her. "When?"

"Your high school and college graduations," he listed, counting them on his fingers, "and then once while you were in law school."

"In law school? When was that?"

"Early on. Your second term. Law library. Group of friends, studying for an exam." He answered the question in her wide eyes. "I was reshelving books."

Traci tried to remember the incident, but she had spent a lot of time in the library and no specific instance stood out to her. She shook her head. "I certainly didn't see you any of those times."

"No. I tried to be inconspicuous. It's not something I do easily."

She smiled in spite of herself. "No, you probably don't." She nodded to herself as she pretended to consult her list. It was time to start asking the real questions. "So, you say that I've hidden myself here on Earth, as a human. Why would I do such a thing?"

His cheery demeanor transformed, his smile gone and his eyes flat and serious. "That's a question that had to be asked, but I'd hoped you wouldn't. Here, come sit with me." He motioned to a bench, and she sat down with him.

"I believe... I think... from what I can deduce, you fled Gallifrey for your life. You see..." He scrubbed his hand down his face, over his mouth and jaw, before he spoke. "Our people, the Time Lords, fought a war with another race, called the Daleks. A war on a scale so enormous that I have problems comprehending it sometimes, and I was there. Billions of warriors fighting, across hundreds of planets. And… we lost. Our planet, our people were destroyed. All gone. All dust." He bit his lip. "I think that faced with certain death just when you were starting to live, you fled the planet and hid yourself away here." He let silence fall between them, interrupted only by the sounds of the children playing around them, incongruous with the deep sadness in his eyes.

Traci was stunned. Her eyes wide and staring, she hugged herself against an iciness that enveloped her. A war so big that it completely destroyed a planet? She couldn't even picture such a thing. The thought of the Earth being populated by seven billion people was not easy to imagine, and that number was equivalent to the number of warriors in the battle at one time? How could that even be possible?

"I can't believe…" She stopped as she heard the trite words issuing from her mouth.

"No. No, you can't. It's too enormous. I understand." He inhaled deeply. "But it's true."

"And your people are gone."

" _Our_ people, yes."

She stared at him, unable to truly comprehend the war and the idea that he and she were the only two survivors. "There's got to be others."

"No, we are the last."

Refusing to believe that, she turned away from him, shaking her head. "That doesn't make any sense. I'm here. You're here. There's got to be more who survived."

The Doctor down at his hands. "There was one other." She looked back at him expectantly. "He did the same thing that I think you did: hid himself to escape the end of the war. I discovered him quite by accident. But, he gave me the idea that there might be others like him out there. I've searched." He looked back up at her. "You're the only one."

"Where is he now?"

His shoulders slumped. "He's dead."

Though she didn't know this now-dead Time Lord, the admission dropped a rock into her stomach. While she didn't feel like a Time Lady and could not feel his loss as one of her own, the Doctor's desolation was almost palpable and she couldn't help but join in his despair. She couldn't begin to imagine what it would be like to be the last human in existence. Anything she could think to say sounded woefully inadequate. "I… I'm sorry." She reached over and put a hand on his arm. He smiled sadly.

"It's all right. I'm all right." Then, he straightened again and his tone was light. "You've more questions, I'm sure."

Traci jerked back at his change in attitude. Certainly he was reluctant to talk more about the war and the end of his people, but his sudden cheer shocked her. This was the first indication that he was truly alien, and shiver ran down her spine. She stared down at her notepad, pretending to consider her questions as she quieted her disturbed nerves. "Um, yeah. So, uh, how did you find me? I mean, you say I'm human now. Do I give off time waves or something?"

He grinned at her little quip. "Actually, no, you're human to all observation. But, you have something Time Lord with you, and I built a device to detect it."

"I do?" Frowning, she looked down at herself, not sure what he was referring to.

"You have a pocket watch, don't you?" Seeing the confusion on her face, he jerked his chin at her purse.

Opening her purse, she reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a brass pocket watch. Turning it over multiple times in her hands, she stared at it as if she had never seen it before. Its cover was etched with a complex design of interlocking circles and lines. "This thing? I've always had it, though I don't use it. I've got this." She pointed at the watch on her wrist, then held up the pocket watch. "This is from the Time Lords?"

"Yes. It's part of the chameleon arch that changed you into a human. It holds the Time Lady part of yourself, and you'll get it back if you open it."

Jerking back, Traci dropped the watch as if it had suddenly become searing hot, and it bounced off the bench and landed on the grass. The Doctor reached down and snagged it, holding it up between them on the tips of three long fingers.

"You can hear it, can't you? Speaking to you softly."

She had never noticed it before, but she knew immediately what he meant: a quiet presence in the back of her mind that had always been there, which had grown a little louder when she pulled the watch out of her purse. Her stomach somersaulted a few times. She nodded, her eyes wide and frightened.

"It waits for you," he murmured, catching her eye. "Whenever you're ready."

That wasn't even a question. Reaching over, she took the watch from him and dropped it back in her purse. It was patient, and its voice quieted a touch. "Can you hear it, too?"

"A little. I can sense its presence. But it's not speaking to me."

She glanced at her purse again, then deliberately looked away. She paused to watch three children run by playing a game of tag. "Okay, so that's how I… change. You said yesterday that you've done this, right? What's it like? I mean, what happens to me, to Traci, when I, you know, become this Time Lady?"

The Doctor leaned back and crossed his arms. "Well, the circumstances were very different. I was being hunted by a family of murderous aliens who could track me as a Time Lord, so I hid myself as a human in England in 1913…"

Traci reminded herself again that this probably really all did make sense.

"...The man I became was very different from me, very human, and I was him for only a couple of months. He had a very hard time deciding to become me again. The aliens had found him and were threatening to kill everyone around him if I didn't return. Without that threat, I don't think he would have chosen to change back."

"Why not?"

The Doctor stated matter-of-factly and without emotion, "He had fallen in love."

Traci stared at him. It was not lost on her that the Doctor referred to the human that he had become as "he," rather than "I." The human had had a difficult time, and the human had fallen in love. Not the Doctor. And she understood exactly what that meant. "If I become the Time Lady, then, Traci disappears. Everything I am now ceases to exist. I won't be me anymore."

He sat back up straight and faced her. "No, not exactly. John Smith still exists, in me, and I can hear him, in my mind, but I'm not John Smith. Traci will still be a part of you, but you will be the Time Lady you were before."

"And who was that?"

One eyebrow cocked high. "What do you mean?"

"What was I like? I hope I was someone I'd like." She shrugged. "What was my name?"

The Doctor tugged at an ear. His eyes dropped to her purse, lingering there for a moment before he shook his head. "I don't know. I've never met you before."

"But..." She stared at him, searching his face for some guidance. "Why would I want to become someone when I don't know who that is?"

"I don't know. That's something you'll have to figure out for yourself."

Covering her mouth with her hand, she sat and thought about everything he'd just described. She tried to imagine herself as a different person, with different thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, but while she could, for the sake of argument, empathize with others' viewpoints and feelings, actually envisioning herself as another person was beyond her. She also tried to understand what it meant to have another persona buried within you, but it made no sense. How could her self as Traci exist while she was also someone else? Her hand dropped into her lap with an audible _thump_. "Is it like dying? Does Traci die and I become someone else?"

"Well, I haven't died, so I can't really say, can I? But, I suppose it might be." He ran a hand through his hair.

"Does it hurt? Changing like that?" she asked in a small voice.

"Oh, yes. It hurts." Holding her gaze, he regarded her with gravity, no hint of his usual flippant cheer. He was determined to not sugar-coat the truth in any way. "It rewrites your entire biology. Your whole body transforms, every cell. It is also frightening and profoundly disturbing, but also empowering, like…" His eyes dropped to his hands, open before him, and he stared at them as if he'd never really seen them before. "Like you're becoming whole again."

For all that he clearly represented the pain this change would cause, it was his last statement that chilled her soul, and she plastered her hand over her mouth, the pull on her skin widening her already horrified eyes. His words implied that she was unfinished, or closed off from herself, or sliced in half. Was she really only half a person? She felt like a complete human being, but how could she know? Maybe he was right and she was just living a lie... but it was the only life she knew, and despite its trials and troubles, she liked it.

"Traci? Are you all right?"

The Doctor's kind, concerned words pulled her back out of her thoughts, though she was still nonplussed. "Yeah. I'm okay." Looking for something to do, she tore the top sheet out of her notebook and crumpled it up. "I'm out of questions," she mumbled. "I need to think."

"I know. Take all the time you need."

"If I have more questions...?" She looked up to see him regarding her with some amount of sympathy.

"I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"Yeah." She glanced around the park once more. "Tomorrow, here?"

"I'll be here." He reached over and patted her on the upper arm, then rose and strode off down the park path. She watched him until he followed its curve out of sight, then she, too, rose and headed home.


	5. Chapter 5

When Traci got home, the first thing she did was plop down on the sofa and watch whatever came on the TV. She welcomed anything that could distract her from thinking about the last twenty-four hours. Crappy Sunday reruns, cooking shows, even basketball, a sport she hated - anything with enough action to keep her mind occupied. After a number of hours, it was hunger that finally roused her from the couch. She flicked the TV off and went to the kitchen to make a meal out of whatever she could find.

While she cooked, she mused over everything the Doctor had said, but it all jumbled in her head and she found herself going in circles. Finally, as she ate, she dealt with it the only way she knew how, by writing it all down and trying to organize it to make some sense. It took her quite a while to decide how to arrange it all and put it together, and at the end, she had two pages of notes to look over.

The thing she couldn't wrap her mind around was being someone else. Like she had the day before, she tried closing her eyes and imagining what it would be like to be someone else, this time pretending to be her friend Lynn. She tried to think like Lynn did, to like things that Lynn did that she disliked, to understand and take to heart Lynn's opinions, but she couldn't do it, and she was a lot closer to being like Lynn than she was to being like some unknown alien Time Lady. Her inability to truly digest this idea didn't surprise her at all. She remembered joining drama club in high school and finding she had no talent for acting: while she could memorize lines just fine, she had been incapable of becoming the character she was playing. If she couldn't do that, why should she expect to be able to understand what it's like to become a Time Lady?

And thus, the only thing that jumped out at her from the paper was the note, "Traci no longer exists." Traci was all she knew how to be. The thought of not being herself terrified her. Could her existence, everything that was important to her, be erased so easily? She looked around at her shabby apartment. It might not be much, but it was everything to her.

With a sudden burst of agitation, she sprang to her feet and dashed over to the window, yanking open the curtains to look out on her tiny corner of Chicago. It was still a dirty city and she wasn't fond of it, but it wasn't so bad. It was home, at least for now. _Her_ home. For some reason, she felt some ownership of this apartment, this neighborhood, even though it was chosen simply for the sake of economy and proximity to work. She stood gazing out at the street for a while, and was only drawn back in by her phone ringing.

Making a mental note to call in sick tomorrow, she strode over and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Hey, Trace, it's me, Aaron." A tremor in his voice revealed his nervousness. "I'm sorry for running out on you yesterday. I'm glad you made it home all right. Do you… do you think we could talk?"

Traci smiled. She had completely forgotten about their fight the day before. _I guess I had more important things to think about_. "Yeah, sure. It's okay, you know. I understand why you left."

"Yeah, well, it helped, to tell the truth. I thought about what you said, and I get it. I get why you want to… why you want to do what you want to do. See," and he took a deep breath, "I don't want to leave Chicago, but I also don't want to break up or anything. So, I was thinking, if you can stand it, let's wait a while and see what happens. You take the bar exam like you're planning and see where that gets you. And in a year, or two at the latest, we see how you feel, and figure out where to go from there. What d'you think?"

She had no idea, and mumbled an "ummm" into the phone to stall for time. Honestly, what she might do about where she lived and how to pursue her career, and whether or not Aaron would move to California with her, wasn't even on her mind anymore. She had to force herself to concentrate on what he had just said, and she realized that he was asking to postpone any decisions - a perfect solution that would let her get back to more important considerations. She caught herself before she yelled, "Yes!" into the phone.

Curbing her enthusiasm, she made herself sound tentative and slightly disappointed. "Yeah, I guess that's a good idea. I can do that. Wait and see." She hoped she sounded convincing. "Talk about it again in a year, maybe? I kinda would like to know how long I'll have to wait."

"Sure, a year sounds good. Plenty of time to see how things go." Aaron sounded a lot more chipper.

"Thanks, honey."

"No problem, babe. I love you, you know. I wanted you to know that, well, that I'm willing to meet you halfway on this. Maybe all the way. Just not right now."

Traci just wanted the call to end. "Yeah. I appreciate it."

"Hey, do you mind, uh, can I come over?"

 _Oh, no way!_ She panicked and couldn't think of a good excuse why he shouldn't come over, since they normally spent almost every evening together. "Uh, not tonight. I've got stuff to do, and I… I want to get to bed early."

"Oh. Okay." She could hear in his voice the suspicion that she was still angry with him, and she silently shook her head; he'd just have to deal with it. "Well, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Maybe we can grab dinner after work."

"Sure, sounds great. G'night." She kissed a couple of times into the phone to try to convince him that she wasn't still angry.

"G'night, sweetie."

Hanging up the receiver, Traci exhaled heavily. She really had not wanted to talk to Aaron tonight, but the phone call taught her exactly what she should do. She cleaned up her dirty dishes, then settled back on the couch to rot her brain with TV until she went to bed.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

The next morning, after calling in sick to work and scarfing down a bowl of cereal, Traci got dressed and headed to the park. It was mostly empty, since it was a school day, except for the alien lying on his coat spread out on the grass. His hands pillowing his head, he was gazing up at the clouds floating by against the azure sky.

"Good morning," she called as she approached. The Doctor tilted his head to see her, and smiled. She had only known him for two days now, and yet the brilliance of his smile caught at her heart. She wondered if all Time Lords were so expressive, so alive.

"Ah, Traci! Join me?" He scooted over to make room on his coat and sat with his knees drawn up, his arms resting on them. Dropping her purse first, she sat down next to him, then spoke before she lost her nerve.

"I've made my decision." She looked him straight in the eye. "I've decided that I don't want to be a Time Lady." Disappointment clouded his face, but she rushed on with her explanation. "I have a good life." She snorted. "Okay, I have an okay life. But I'm just starting and I want to see where it goes. I want to be me, not someone else." She added in almost an undertone, "I don't want to die."

He composed his expression into neutrality. "Of course you don't. You have your whole life ahead of you."

She wagged a finger at him. "But I don't want to rule it out, either."

"Well, you can change your mind any time you like. You just need to open the watch."

She eyed her purse, then shook her head. "No, I don't think I could do it alone." She leveled her gaze directly at the Doctor. "Come back and ask me again, in a few years."

The Doctor smiled, a gleam of respect in his eyes. "Of course."

Grabbing her purse, Traci stood up. "Thanks for, um…" Not at all sure she had wanted to know anything he had told her, she didn't know what to thank him for. "Um, yeah. See ya." She turned and fled.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note** : Minor language warning - this is the reason this story is rated K+.

* * *

They said that the company kept a stable of lawyers, and Traci felt the description was accurate: she certainly spent her time mucking through the bullshit. A stack of folders a foot high sat on the corner of her desk, and she worked through the requests for reviews and research as fast as she could. A typical day had her at her desk from seventy-thirty in the morning through six at night, and it was widely discussed among the junior staff that the the senior staff's offices were usually empty by five.

Today was no different from any other day. She was currently working on reviewing some minor copyright issues; somehow, all of the tasks no one else wanted to do ended up on her desk. After that, well, she could choose any one of thirty other onerous, boring, non-challenging tasks from the pile. This had been her job for the past two years, and was likely to stay the same for the foreseeable future. She wasn't quite the bottom rung on the ladder, but even the guys who'd been here for five years hadn't moved up yet, and she was quite sure her gender wasn't helping her at all.

The door burst open and one of the senior lawyers strode in and dumped another folder on her pile. "Here's another for you. Critical. Get it done today, will you?"

Traci reached over and flipped the cover open, glancing at the material inside. "This would take you ten minutes!" she exclaimed as she scowled at it. "It'll take me the rest of the day to gather the information you already have on this contract."

He wagged his silver pen at her. "It's good training and experience for you, essential if you ever want to start working on your own projects. Get it done quickly and I'll put in a good word for you."

Traci bit back the reply she really wanted to make and tapped the papers in front of her. "Is this more important than the other 'critical' task you gave me earlier?"

"Much. But get them both done today. That's a good girl." A turn and he was gone, the door slamming behind him.

Traci threw her pen across her desk and slumped back in her chair, puffing her breath up so that her bangs flipped. "Bastard. I don't even think he knows my name," she grumbled.

Deb, one of the two women who shared the office with her, snorted. "Oh, he knows all the women's names. But you've got a ring on your finger, so you're not eligible for his kind of promotion."

"Not like he hasn't tried." Traci shook her head. "This place is the worst. Old boys' club and corporate red tape. We're all still stuck in this office, and you, Jen, you've been here three times as long as I have."

"Yeah," Jen agreed, peering at Traci over the tall stacks of folders on her desk, "and this place is resumé death. It's not like I haven't tried to find something else."

"No use bitching about the same old thing every day." Deb dropped her pen on her desk and slumped back in her chair. "How did last night go, Trace?"

"It didn't." Traci ran her hand through her hair and pulled at a handful, dejected. "Aaron had to work late _again_ , so we had to cancel the reservations. He got home around eleven."

"That stinks." Deb eyed Traci, taking care to hide her suspicions behind a tower of papers. "Nothing after that, I'm guessing."

"Nope." She shrugged. "Said he was beat. He went straight to bed."

Deb and Jen exchanged knowing glances, but Traci didn't notice.

"Well, there's always next time, Trace. Maybe this weekend." Jen made a tolerable effort to sound hopeful.

"There never seems to be a next time. Always a raincheck. For everything." Traci didn't need to be more explicit; she'd expressed her frustrations with the lack of intimacy in her marriage to Deb and Jen many times. She threw her hands up in a wide shrug. "He's going fishing early on Saturday, and that'll be the whole day, and then on Sunday there's a basketball game." She shook her head, missing Deb's and Jen's cynical smirks at the list of Aaron's weekend activities. "You know, Aaron hated it when we moved to SF. All he wanted to do was stay at home and do stuff with me. He was smothering me. And now, we barely ever see each other. All he wants to do is go out with his friends. It's like it's one extreme or the other."

"Well, maybe you should go with him, get to know his friends," Jen suggested, and Deb silently motioned to her to shush.

"I've tried! He says it's a guy thing, that they don't bring their wives, so he can't." Traci shrugged and stared at the papers on the desk in front of her while Deb shot angry looks at Jen. The phone on Traci's desk buzzed, startling all of them, and she snatched up the receiver. "Yeah?... Is it Aaron?... Then who is it?... Oh!" Her eyes widened and she blanched. "Um. Tell him I can't, I'm working… Yeah… No. I don't…" She ran her free hand through her hair. "But… Tell him no… No… I know, I can hear him!… Okay! Okay! Tell him okay!... Twelve-thirty, at the square. Sure." She slammed the receiver back in the cradle, then picked up her pen and pretended to dive back into her work.

Deb peered at her, one eyebrow cocked, then asked, "Who was that?"

"Sharon at reception." Traci didn't look up.

"And she wanted… ?"

"There's a guy here to see me." She didn't look up, so she didn't see Deb's smirk.

"Oh?"

The innuendo in her tone was unmistakable, and Traci glared daggers at her. "It's not like that. I met him once, a few years ago. _Not_ happy to see him again."

"You met him once a few years ago? You mean in Chicago? And he found you here? Sounds intriguing..." Deb smirked, eyebrows hidden high behind her bangs.

"No. Not intriguing. Stalking. Creepy." Traci pursed her lips. "''Creepy' is definitely the right word." Deb grinned back at her, then returned to her work. The office was silent except for pen scratches and papers flipping for about fifteen minutes.

"Deb?" Traci's mumble was almost inaudible.

"Yeah, Trace?"

A pause. "If a guy came up to you and offered to take you off to see the world, but on the condition that you left your life behind and never returned, would you do it?"

Deb pursed her lips. "Is he gorgeous?"

Traci thought for a moment. "Um, let's say no."

"Damn straight. In a heartbeat."

Traci laughed. "Okay. Thanks for the advice."

"Any time."

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

On one of the first dry spring days of the year, everyone was outdoors for lunch. Even here, deep in the city, the breeze kept the air fresh and the trilling of the birds floated over the noise of the people and the traffic. It was still a bit chilly and Traci pulled her jacket close around her. She threaded her way through the crowd, forcing her feet to keep moving. She was not looking forward to having this conversation again. She hoped that the little urban park would be so packed that she could make the excuse of not being able to find him.

Unfortunately, the Doctor spotted her almost the moment she gained the sidewalk encircling the square and called her name. Again, he looked exactly the same as before: blue suit, brown overcoat, hands in his pockets, hair sticking straight up over that still-young face. That bubbling energy that kept him rocking back and forth on his toes as he waited for her to join him and his sparkling smile lifted her spirits. She couldn't help but smile back at him.

"Traci! You're looking lovely as ever!" He bowed to her.

"Doctor. Good to see you again." It was a lie, but she couldn't think of anything else to say. "It's been a long time."

"A bit. About four years. How have you been getting on?" They started strolling about the square together.

"Pretty good." The small talk irritated her, so swallowing hard, she steeled herself to take the conversation where it needed to go. "Look, I know why you're here."

"Down to business, eh?" Though his demeanor remained perfectly pleasant, his amusement infected his tone. "If that's what you want."

Looking up at him, she caught his eye and set her hands on her hips with some defiance. "I haven't changed my mind."

"Didn't think you would."

The wind picked up, rustling the bright new leaves on the trees above them, and Traci shivered. She had changed to a lighter jacket earlier in the week, but it was obviously too early in the season to rely on warm weather. Shedding his overcoat, the Doctor draped it over her shoulders. The hem dragged on the ground as she walked, so she made a point to hike it up by pulling it around herself. "Thanks," she murmured as she adjusted the garment. "That's a lot better. Aren't you cold?"

"Nah. Our core body temperature is much lower than that of humans, so this is comfortable for me." He shrugged.

They strolled a bit more, the Doctor observing the people around them with a slight wondering smile on his face, before Traci felt she had to break the silence. "I wasn't sure you'd find me here in SF." She snorted. "No, that's not true. You could find me anywhere, couldn't you?"

"Long as you have the watch."

"Yeah." Without being conscious of it, she hugged her purse closer to herself. "I couldn't get rid of it if I wanted to. You really want me to do this, don't you?"

The Doctor glanced at her sideways, then sniffed. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't, but it's not up to me and you shouldn't care what I want. It's all you, what you want to do. I only want to make sure you have the option. Like we agreed four years ago."

"Yeah, well. To tell the truth, I've thought about it." Traci felt lucky that they were walking, so that she didn't have to look at him as she talked. "I mean, it's not like I can avoid thinking about it now and then. When you took me in the TARDIS, all those stars… But, it's hard to take it seriously, all this talk about Time Ladies and all. When Sharon said you were at reception…" She rubbed her hand over her stomach to quiet its roiling. "It was like she was telling me that the executioner had come for me on Death Row."

"Traci." The Doctor's voice was low and dead serious. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. I'm not here to force you."

"I know. But you're a symbol, of the end of me." She halted and turned to face him. "You're my death, aren't you? You'll be right there, at the end. You'll be the last person I see, that Traci sees, ever. You terrify me." The wind had died down, but she still shivered, even in the big warm coat.

Though his expression didn't change, a deep sadness crept into his eyes. "I'm so sorry, Traci. That was never the intention."

"I know, I know. But it's like," and she glanced around, searching for the words, "if someone tells you that if you die, you become an angel, it sounds great. But then if someone tells you they'll kill you right now so you can become an angel, and they hold a knife in your face, it's horrible."

The Doctor held up his hands to show they were empty. "No knife, Traci. Just a choice. You can always say no."

Breathing deep, she nodded. "Then I say no. I'm happy. I'm young. I have a great life."

The Doctor flashed one of those brilliant smiles of his. "Glad to hear! Change of scenery worked out for you?"

"Yeah. California is a lot more my style than..." Her sentence trailed off as something occurred to her. "You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?" he asked with a slight quizzical frown.

"About my life. About how it's been going and all."

Confused, he frowned at her, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "No. Why should I?"

"You're a Time Lord and all." She gave a vague wave at his chest. "And you've been following me around. I figured you knew everything about me."

"I've only seen you those few times I told you about, and that's all I know about you." He seemed genuinely surprised that she thought he'd know more about her than he did. "I'm not a god, Traci. I'm just a man."

"Who can see time or something like that."

He jerked his head towards an empty bench under a flowering plum and strolled over to it, waiting gallantly for her to sit before joining her. Leaning forward, he propped his elbows on his knees as he spoke.

"It's not like that. I can see the timestream, how events progress, interweave with each other. Where they might go, where they might not. I can't see individual lives like I'm watching a film. It's like..." He gazed around the square as he searched for an explanation. His mouth hung slightly open, with the tip of his tongue pressed up just behind his front teeth. An idea came to him: his entire body lit up with energy, and he illustrated his statements with expressive hands as he spoke. "It's like standing over a river and watching it flow. I can see where the water comes from and where it's likely to go, where it won't, where it shouldn't, and all the currents and eddies. And there are rocks in the way that the water erupts against, or little pools off to the side that stay calm and steady. Sometimes I can see individual fish, but just for a second before they flicker and flit away. I can't follow the path of one individual fish and see details of how it swims, or how it lives and dies. That's not what a Time Lord sees. I see the flow of the water in the entire river of time, not each fish."

Traci could imagine watching a river, and tried to apply that thought to watching time. It was impossible to actually picture it, but she had a much better idea of what he was trying to convey. "And you see this everywhere? In addition to seeing and hearing normally?" He nodded. "How… how can you do that? It must be…" - she couldn't think of a better word - "enormous."

"It is. It's not easy. Some of our people couldn't do it, and they went mad. A human couldn't do it; his mind would burn up." He reached over and squeezed her hand. "But you were able to. You wouldn't be here if you hadn't."

If he meant that to be reassuring, to make her realize that she had once been as powerful as he, it had the exact opposite effect. The concept of her alien self scared her more and more as she thought about it, and she stuffed that away in the back of her mind, determined to ignore it. "It's too much to even imagine."

"Quite right." He patted her hand before withdrawing his, then smiled broadly. "But! Tell me about your life! I'd love to learn more about the real Traci." He suddenly curbed his enthusiasm. "If I'm not being rude. I'm rude sometimes. Well, a lot of the time."

She smirked. "Yeah, that was rude, but it's okay." She thought for a moment about what he might want to hear. "Well, we moved here about three years ago. By 'we,' I mean me and Aaron. You remember him? We were in that cafe where I met you."

"Oh, yes. I remember him."

"Good." She nodded. "At that time, I had been studying for the bar in Chicago, but I finally decided I really didn't want to stay there and switched to California law, and Aaron said okay, he'd come with me. He found a good job right off, working for Pacbell. Then I passed the bar and got a job here, and then we got married." She grinned. "I'm still working my way up, and we're holding off having kids until we make a little more."

"Sounds lovely! Everything you hoped, then!"

The image of her little office with Deb and Jen, cramped and filled with unfulfilling work, flitted across her mind and she shrugged. "Well, it's never what you imagine it's going to be, is it? I mean, the legal department is such an old boys' network. It's going to be a while before I can move into a challenging position. Way too many people ahead of me for promotion." Her candor surprised her. For some reason, she felt comfortable telling the Doctor things; maybe it was because he seemed to be actually interested in her life, in all the details. That hadn't changed since she once walked home from school with him.

"How long have you been working there?"

"Little over two years. To be honest, it's nowhere near where I wanted to be at thirty. Not at all." She shrugged. "I have time. And I've got Aaron. He's my rock."

"Splendid! Tell me about him!" He grinned like a child waiting for mom to tell him a story, and she couldn't help laughing.

"Yes, well, he's wonderful." Her eyes glowed as she spoke. "He was happy to follow me out here, when I finally got sick enough of Chicago, even though it meant that he gave up a great job and we had to start over. It took us a while to really find our feet, but now it's working out. At least he's not the only one supporting us anymore. If I can get promoted, I'll be making more than him." She smiled proudly. "Then we'll be able to afford a house, and kids."

The Doctor's eyes lit up at the mention of children. "Ah! I can just see the little Tracis and Aarons running around."

She grinned, but shook her head sadly. "Won't be for a while. Aaron really wants us to be secure first."

"Well!" he exclaimed, cocking his head to the side. "That's not all bad. Gives you plenty of time to enjoy each other's company while you're young."

"We try. Work gets in the way a lot. Aaron always has to work late." She pursed her lips in regret. "I mostly go out with Deb from work and my friends."

"But there's weekends, right?" The Doctor's grin changed to confusion. "I never really got how weekends work. That's the part of the week when you don't have to be somewhere, right?"

Traci stared at him, incredulous. "You don't know what a weekend is?"

"Well," he drawled, "I don't really work to a timetable."

She eyed him with a jealous grimace. "Must be nice. But yeah. It's when you have time for stuff other than work. Like, I've been taking cooking classes. And Paula and I, we volunteer at the kids' center once a month. And Aaron, he loves his golf and hiking and camping and fishing."

"Oh, yes! Last time you were shopping for camping equipment, weren't you?"

"That's right. But I don't do that anymore. Too dirty and cold." She sneered her distaste for the activity. "Aaron camps with with his friends. All the time. It's his favorite thing."

"Doesn't sound like you spend much time together then," the Doctor observed. His face fell as he realized what he sounded like.

Traci jerked back, staring at him. "What?"

He grimaced, embarrassed. "That was rude, wasn't it?"

Traci frowned at him. "Yes, it was!" The Doctor apologized, but she barely heard him as the thought distracted her. "I never really thought about it." She thought back, trying to remember the last time she'd done anything with Aaron. "We haven't spent a day together in a couple of months. He's always off somewhere. And he's always working late."

Gazing off at a particularly interesting corner of concrete tile, the Doctor rubbed the back of his neck. "Oh, I'm sure he's just securing his job and earning some extra money."

She turned and stared right at him, her eyes filling with cold fire. "No, he's not. I do the finances, and I just realized he's not making any extra money. His paychecks are the same as they always were. He's _not_ working late. The lying sonofabitch!"

"Now, Traci, I'm sure there's a good explanation for it…"

"Oh, there is! I know what it is. And I'm going to beat it out of him! I don't believe..." She inhaled sharply, slapping a hand to her mouth. "Deb and Jen! They knew! They could tell, but I couldn't! God, I'm so blind!" And she lost it. The tears flooded out and she buried her face in her hands. Moving over on the bench, the Doctor put an arm around her shoulders, comforting her as she cried.

"It was… It was going so good… We were going to… How could he?... Doctor, how could he? What… What am I going to do?" She gasped, her breathing ragged.

The Doctor bit his lip, not really knowing how to respond. "Er, honestly, I haven't the foggiest. I'm rubbish with relationships."

She looked up at him, her cheeks wet and her eyes puffy. "At least _you_ tell me the truth." She nestled back into his shoulder. "It's all so clear. The late nights. All the weekends. He's always exhausted. He barely talks to me, and he never touches me. We haven't had sex in forever. He hasn't even nagged me about getting out of this terrible job. What am I going to do?"

The Doctor sputtered a bit, unsure of what to say. "Talk to him, I expect? Try to work it out? I'm sure your friends can help you. It's nothing you need to decide now."

Stifling another sob, she tilted her head back and looked up at the Doctor again. "The watch. I don't have to take this. I could just make it all go away."

The Doctor's brow creased with worry. "You know that's not the way. The watch is not a cheat, to get out of life. That's not a good reason to do it, and you'll regret it."

"You don't know that. My Time Lady self would probably be happy to be back, wouldn't she, Doctor? Or maybe you do know. Do you regret choosing to stop being John Smith?" She wiped the tears from her eyes.

Biting his lip, he hesitated before answering her. "No, I don't. But you know what I'm saying. Pain and loss are as much a part of being human as happiness and love. You're hurting now…"

"...but I've loved before and will love again, no matter how much it might seem like I won't?" Scowling, she jumped up from the bench and whirled on him. "Stop patronizing me, Doctor! I don't need some universe-wise, holier-than-thou alien to tell me it's all going to be just fine. Why would anyone even say that? How does that help at all?"

The Doctor sat back, shaking his head at her. "I'm not telling you anything of the sort. I'm simply saying that throwing away your human life is not something you should do simply to escape your problems." He eyed her purse. "Is that what you really want? Is his betrayal so important that you're willing to die for it?"

Traci buried her face in her hands, her chest heaving as she tried to suppress the sobs that threatened to burst forth again. "No. No, it's not. _He's_ not. I know, I know. I shouldn't take the easy way out."

Standing up, the Doctor placed a hand on her shoulder. "And it really isn't the easy way out anyway. Being a Time Lady has its own glories and troubles."

Traci sniffled and drew the overcoat tighter around herself as a puff of wind rustled the branches above. "Doctor. If I did open the watch, would I be able to stay here on Earth?"

"You can do whatever you want. That's a possibility, yes. But I would be surprised if you chose to do so."

Inhaling deeply to compose herself, she stepped back to put some space between them. "Then, what would I do? Where would I go?"

"You could go anywhere, in any time, and do anything. The entire universe is open to you." The Doctor's voice was low and serious.

"But you said our planet is gone, right?" It had been years since that last conversation, but that was one detail that had stayed fresh in her mind: that war and the terrible loss of their people. "So I can't go back there."

"That's right. You can't."

"Then how would I figure out where I would go and what I would do? And how would I get to wherever that is?"

"Well," he began, glancing up at the sky, "you as a Time Lady know far more about the universe than you do as Traci. I'm sure there are hundreds of planets and civilisations you'd know from your studies that would be suitable, and I can take you to your choice and help you get started there. Or," and he bowed his head slightly, peering at her from out of the corners of his eyes, "if you wanted to, you could travel with me."

Drawing herself up straight, Traci frowned at the Doctor with suspicion. "Wait." She began to rage with anger again, and her hands were fists by her sides. "That's what this is all about, isn't it?"

"What?" Taken aback by her sudden change in attitude, he stared at her with wide eyes, one eyebrow cocked.

"What you're saying is, whatever I might want to do as a Time Lady, it really is all dependent on you." She spun away, her mouth working soundlessly as the full realization of the restrictions on her life hit her. She turned back to him, panting as she fought to keep her anger from overwhelming her. "I can't go anywhere without you and your spaceship!"

The Doctor blinked. "I never thought of that. I suppose…"

She didn't want to hear any more of his evasions. "No, that's really what's going on here! If I become this Time Lady, I'm stuck with you. Is that what you're really here for? A woman to follow you around, completely dependent on you?" She threw up her hands with a sarcastic shrug. "Repopulate the species while you're at it?"

"What? No!" he sputtered. "That's not… No!... I never even thought…" A sudden gust of wind scattered tiny pink petals from the tree above all over them. The Doctor drew back from her. "No! I mean, yes, we've only one TARDIS, unless you have a TARDIS, but you won't know until you change. But I don't want you to follow me! I mean, unless you want to! It's all up to you. I just want to help. I'm not going to hold you back."

Stomping forward, she jabbed him in the chest with a finger. "You can't help but hold me back! I can't do anything without you! Nothing! That's the way it always is, isn't it? People in a position of power, telling you they're helping you, they're teaching you, they're taking you where you want to go, they're giving you the choice, but all they're really doing is keeping you under their thumb! They pretend you're making the decisions, but they hold all the strings!" She tore off the overcoat and threw it into his startled face. "Go away, Doctor. The answer is no, and it'll always be no." She added in a low, dangerous voice, "Don't bother coming back."

Heels clicking on the pavement, she whirled and strode off, disappearing into the crowd.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

Traci burst into the office and, shutting the door too firmly, slammed her purse down on her desk and dropped into her chair, staring at the mess of papers in front of her. Deb threw a glance at Jen, then decided to risk Traci's wrath.

"I take it you decided not to run off and see the world, then?"

WIth a disgusted smirk, Traci snorted. "Men. They could come from a different planet even, and they're all fuckin' the same. They control everything, decide what you get to do, how high you can climb, where you get to go. They go off and do whatever they want and expect you to be waiting for them." She whirled on Deb. "Aaron's cheating on me, isn't he?"

With a sheepish grimace, Deb bit her lip. Glancing at Jen, she replied, "I'm so sorry, Trace. I don't know for sure, but we've suspected it for a long time. How'd you figure it out?"

"I don't know. It suddenly all just made sense." She pounded the desktop with her fist. "That asshole."

"What are you going to do?"

Traci rasped in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She hadn't even thought of the future, but the question sparked the answer in her mind immediately. "First, determine if it's true. And I'm pretty sure it is. Then, I'm going to move on with my life. No more waiting for someone else to make me happy." She stared at Deb with grim determination.

Surprised, Jen let her jaw droop open. "Aren't you going to give him a chance? To make it up?"

Traci sneered a smile. "Oh, he gets a chance if he wants it. But he's going to have to convince me that he's sincere and going to change his life, and let me tell you, that won't be easy. Because I'm not going to let anyone deceive me anymore. No one gets to manipulate me. No one tells me how to live my life." She pounded the desk once more. "And that goes for here, too. Promotion within six months or I'm out. I'll find someone who'll appreciate my talents."

Deb rose from her desk and circled around to Traci. "That's it! You go!" She knelt next to her friend and hugged her. Traci leaned into Deb's shoulder and started to cry.


	7. Chapter 7

With her hands on her hips, Traci twirled in front of the mirror, letting the skirt of the dress flare out. The cloth draped well in the front, and she twisted to try to get a view of the back in the reflection. "What do you think?" she asked the woman standing behind her.

Deb eyed her up and down, bracing her chin in her hand. "It's okay, but I've never really thought blue was your color. I really think you should go for a red sheath. Or a black one if you prefer."

"Really?" She turned to Deb, her face scrunched. "I don't want to look like I'm coming on to him or anything. This is Alex we're talking about. He just asked me to this party because he needed a plus-one."

"It's one of those snobby art gallery parties. You'll be hobnobbing with all those blue bloods or whatever they're called. You gotta look the part." She pursed her lips. "And besides, I don't think that Alex asked just because he needed a plus-one."

"We're just friends, Deb. I like this dress. I'm going to get it." She swept back into the dressing room and shut the door.

Deb snorted. "You're just friends, and yet, he's all you can talk about." Her tone switched to a wheezing mockery of Traci's. "'Alex came over last night to watch _3rd Rock_. Alex and I went to see _Gladiator_ this weekend. Alex's sister came into town, and we all went out for sushi. Alex got a big bonus for the project he finished at work. Alex went down to San Jose to get his teeth flossed. Alex is going to -'"

A ball of blue dress sailed over the door and splatted Deb in the face, cutting off her monologue. "That's just ridiculous! I don't do that."

"Sure you don't." Deb's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Hey, what are you doing tonight?"

There was a short pause before Traci replied sheepishly, "Going to the Giants game with Alex." The door burst open, and she emerged in her own blouse and jeans. She wagged a finger at Deb. "But that doesn't mean anything."

Deb handed her the dress and her purse. "Suuure..."

Traci paid for the dress and the two friends headed out of the boutique into the walkway of the mall.

"What about shoes?"

Traci shook her head. "Nah. I hate buying matching shoes. I never ever get another outfit to match them. I have a pair of gold heels that'll do fine. And a purse."

"Great!" Deb elbowed her friend. "Sounds like it's lunchtime, then. And then we can head back to Macy's. I really need some new suits for work."

"'Kay. Which way is the food court?" Traci scanned down the mall in both directions and saw the food signs off to the right, but a familiar figure clad in a blue suit and long coat caught her eye, and she groaned to herself. She hadn't expected to ever see the Doctor again, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. The intervening years had mellowed her dislike of both him and what he symbolized to her, but she hated having to think about the choice he had offered her. Still, she knew that if he was here, meeting with him was inevitable and she might as well get it over with.

"Hey, Deb, there's a friend of mine over there. I wanna go say hi." She jerked her head in the general direction and motioned for her to follow. Without waiting to see if Deb was coming, she strode towards the man.

"Doctor!" she called. He spun around and, spotting her, smiled. It didn't shine as it always had before, and she wondered if he was tired or ill.

"Traci!" He clasped his hands behind his back and bowed as she approached.

As they reached him, Traci glanced at Deb. She had that look on her face that she always had when she was checking out a guy. Traci rolled her eyes. "Deb, this is an old friend of mine, the -" She stopped herself, knowing the name was too weird. "Uh, John. This is John." She turned to the Doctor. "This is Deb. I used to work with her, back when we last saw each other."

Deb extended her hand, and the Doctor caught and shook it eagerly. "Hullo! A pleasure to meet you, Deb."

She smiled coquettishly. "Pleasure's all mine," she oozed, looking him up and down, her eyes obviously lingering on specific interesting features. "Traci, why haven't you ever brought your scrumptious friend around before, if you've known him that long?" Turning back to "John", she licked her lips and murmured, "You're one I'd definitely remember."

The Doctor's demeanor transformed from friendly exuberance to acute embarrassment. "Oh, I'm from out of town," the Doctor quipped, stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets and backing a step away.

"Of course you are!" Deb cooed. "The accent's even more delicious."

The Doctor looked like he was about to turn and sprint away, so Traci came to his rescue, laughing to herself. "Sorry! Deb loves to see how much she can make a man blush. She's an incorrigible flirt."

"Not just flirting." Deb smiled seductively, then her laugh turned mischievous, and the Doctor relaxed.

"Hey," Traci called to catch Deb's attention, "do you mind if I catch up with John? We don't see each other much, obviously. I'll join you in a little while."

"Oh, sure, take your time. Gonna grab lunch, then I'll be in Macy's like we planned." Deb turned to the Doctor. "Nice to meet you. Come visit more often." She winked and strolled off.

The Doctor pulled a hand out of his pocket and rubbed the back of his neck. "Your friend is very nice."

Traci smirked. "The man of the universe can't handle a little flirting."

He shrugged. "Told you. I'm rubbish at that sort of thing."

Deciding it was best to take command of the conversation, Traci changed the subject. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

The Doctor studied the toes of his sneakers. "Well, it sounded like you needed a little space."

"I did." Embarrassed by the memory of their last encounter, she shrugged. "I got a little emotional, and took it out on you. I'm sorry."

Looking at her in earnest, he shook his head. "Oh, no! I'm the one who should apologize. You were right, absolutely right. Coming to see you, telling you about who you were: that was pure selfishness. I thought... I thought you'd want it, that you'd be eager to take up your old life again, but I should have known better. Of course you wouldn't want to die. I was really only thinking of myself, of not being the last anymore." Leaving her face for a moment, his eyes roamed around the shopping mall without seeing any of it. He sniffed and caught her gaze again. "I can't offer you a good life. We don't have a home, or a purpose. Not anymore. You'd just be wandering the universe like I do, or you'd just live amongst another species somewhere, never quite feeling like you belong. You'd be a Time Lady in name only, doing whatever you could find to occupy your time. What kind of life is that? You're far better off with the life you've already made for yourself."

He bowed his head for a moment, seeming to search for the strength to continue, then faced her with solemnity. "I came here to, well, I just wanted to make sure you're all right, and to assure you that I won't bother you anymore."

Shocked by the apology and the promise, Traci looked directly into his eyes to ascertain if he was actually sincere, and she lost herself in their ancient depths. For the first time, she was conscious of the desolation he kept so carefully hidden, and her callousness sickened her, that she had not realized that as the last of his people, he must carry a massive burden and be lonelier than she could imagine. Tears filled her eyes, and, as she often did, she covered her discomfiture with irritation.

"That's just ridiculous," Traci blurted, and he jerked back, staring at her. "I can't imagine at all what it's like to be you, to be the last of your kind, to have lost your whole planet, to be alone in the universe. But only a lunatic would blame you for wanting someone by your side," she stated, waving an exasperated hand at her own chest to indicate just who that lunatic was. "I'm being the selfish one here, completely absorbed in thinking it all affects me and me only. And honestly, you needed to tell me. It wouldn't have been fair to not let me know."

Horrified, the Doctor held his hands up to stop her from continuing. "No, Traci, you can't make your decision based on how it affects me. That's the last thing you should do. What happens to me is not important. Make your choice for yourself, not me."

"Oh," she replied, a sarcastic smile on her face, "you still don't get to tell me what to do. Don't worry, I haven't changed my mind. I don't know if I ever will." She continued in softer tones, her pursed lips expressing her regret. "I'm just saying that I didn't think about what it all means to you, and I acted like a tool last time, accusing you of all that B.S. I think I was yelling at Aaron through you." She glanced down at the ground. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He ran his hand through his hair. "I think we both have a lot of work to do to understand each other."

Traci frowned. The Doctor's hand had dislodged few tiny pink petals, and she watched them flutter to the ground. She stepped forward and picked one from where it had settled on his lapel.

"You have plum petals in your hair."

He leaned closer to inspect the one in her hand. "So I do."

"Plums flower in spring. It's July." Her jaw dropped. "They're from the trees in the park downtown, aren't they?"

"I suppose they are." He didn't look surprised at all.

Her jaw dropped open and she shivered her amazement. "That was three years ago!"

"About fifteen minutes ago for me." His shrug communicated that it was nothing out of the ordinary for him. "I stopped to watch the choir on the stage in the food court."

Traci's words caught in her throat and she hacked them out. "You… you've been using that.. that... _machine_ of yours to just hop around in my life? You're, like, spending a day jumping through my whole life?"

Nonplussed, the Doctor tugged at his ear. "Well, yeah. I reckon I am."

She threw up her hands in astonishment. "You… I… It's been three years! And I yelled at you fifteen minutes ago? You can't do that! That's not fair! Have you been doing that all along?"

He ran his tongue over his teeth before answering. "Well, from my point of view, I met you in Pasadena about five hours ago," he admitted with a sheepish grimace.

 _Sixteen years ago_. She stared at him, mouth wide open and arms dangling, limp at her sides, for over ten seconds. She blinked, then exhaled heavily. "Okay, after this, you're going to do this the right way. However many years pass for me, that many years have gotta pass for you, too." She pounded a finger in her palm, emphasizing each word. "Got it?"

"Traci," he whined, sticking out his chin like a petulant teenager. "I'm a time traveller. I don't live from one second to the next. I go back and forth, into the past and the future. Keeping track of how much time passes for me is proper hard, bordering on impossible."

She frowned. "Then you don't even know how old you are?"

He shrugged. "No, I don't. The TARDIS probably knows, but it would depend on whether or not we count certain parts of my life as actually aging and that's not something we've ever been able to settle on…" He broke off when he noticed Traci glaring at him with her arms crossed. "Oh. Right. Well, I usually say somewhere around nine hundred years, give or take a century, though I expect that's a bit of an underestimation. How about 904? A good happy number." He seemed inexplicably pleased with himself.

"No no no." Holding up a finger, she shook her head to clear her confusion. "You know what? You're just too weird. So, fine, you can't tell how long it is between visits. Just stop time-stalking me! It's creepy! Go do something else for a while, _then_ come back and see how I'm doing."

An amused grin spread across his face. "All right. I can do that."

"So? Get out of here!" She swept at him with both hands.

"Until next time, Traci." He bowed and turned to leave.

"Oh, Doctor?"

He spun back, continuing a few more steps backwards. "Yes?"

"I'm doing better. Finally got rid of Aaron. Got a new job, some great friends. Still slaving away, but I'll get there."

The Doctor smiled, and it brightened her day. "Brilliant. I'll see you in a few years, Traci."


	8. Chapter 8

Sighing low in her throat, Traci snatched the resume she was reading from the desktop and slammed it down in the reject pile. It was unbelievable how many obviously unqualified candidates applied for the position when the posted requirements were so specific. Despite requiring three years of experience (which, she mused, considering the position, wasn't asking a whole lot), this one was fresh out of law school, and the one before him hadn't even attended law school - _that_ one was hoping that a summer job at his mother's law firm was enough.

Out of sixty applicants so far, she had only found three that were suitable. She had about twenty more to look at; if the previous rate was any indication, she'll find only one more possibility. She had the go-ahead to hire two new people, but had hoped to make a case for a third. Now, it was starting to look like she'd be lucky to find one. She hoped that at least she could argue for a higher salary offer, so that she could be assured that the lucky candidate would accept.

She leaned back in her chair to relax a moment before grabbing the next resume. She was running out of time. She had really hoped to have the new hires settled and trained to a basic level before she resigned, but with only six weeks left, it was nearly impossible. Maybe, if she could get these hires done quickly, she could continue as a consultant for a while. Laying her hand on her swollen belly, she bit her lip, thinking. She really didn't want to continue on and have to take maternity leave, only to resign soon after she returned. That course of action was beneficial to neither her nor the company. She wished she had made up her mind to resign to raise her children a lot earlier.

She actually hadn't wanted to leave. She'd been at the company for six years now, originally hired as legal counsel for the small data storage firm, but as business took off and concerns about data protection, retrieval, and ownership piled up, she had become essential to its livelihood, as important to its smooth operation as the programmers and technicians. She had intended to organize a legal office for the firm, but had never had the time, and now her departure would be a big blow their stability. She couldn't just leave them high and dry, but she also had her family to think about. Jason had already spent the first year of his life in the care of a nanny, and it was high time he had a real mother.

The next resume could wait a few more minutes. She pushed herself to her feet and walked out of her office to fetch some water. The hallway was long, and she noticed that she was waddling more than she would have liked. She hadn't been this big at this point with Jason. This baby was going to be enormous.

As she grabbed a cup from the dispenser, Traci's cell phone rang in her pocket. Pulling it out, she flipped it open and propped it on her shoulder as she filled the cup with water. "Traci… I do?... Oh!... No, don't bother. I'm just on the other side of the door. Be right there." Clapping the phone closed, she dropped it in her pocket, put the cup down on the top of the water cooler, then headed to the door just fifteen feet down the hallway and pulled it open halfway. Through it, she saw the Doctor, this time clad in a brown suit under his overcoat.

"Doctor! Come in!"

He turned, smiling brightly. "Traci!" She pulled the door all the way open, and his eyes immediately traveled down to her waist. His expression transformed into wonder and delight, and he declared in a throaty murmur, "Oh, brilliant!" Stepping through the door, he caught her free hand and kissed it with easy gallantry.

Traci grinned, both proud of her condition and amused by the Doctor's reaction. She leaned through the door and called, "Thanks, Mel!" to the receptionist, then let the door fall closed as they turned to walk towards her office.

"Looks like you're doing well, then!" The Doctor fairly beamed with happiness.

"Pretty well, yes." As they reached the water cooler, she grabbed her cup. "Want some? Or a cup of coffee?"

"Oh, no, thank you."

"Suit yourself. My office's this way." She led him down the hallway into her little office and indicated to him the cheap guest chair that was pushed against the wall near the door. As he removed his coat then dragged the chair out to sit in it, she circled around her desk and eased herself down into her chair.

The Doctor gazed with fascination at the office, which was packed with filing cabinets and reference books. Every surface except the desk was stacked with papers and files. "Cozy! I like it."

"It's mine. I built it. I'm the legal department here," she declared with evident pride and self-satisfaction. "This company is poised to become a leader in data storage and content delivery in the next two years, and I handle all of its contracts and ownership and copyright issues. And soon, I'll have a real department set up here, with multiple lawyers to take on the increased client load."

"Everything you've always wanted, then."

"Yup. I'm proud of what I've done here. But I'm going to resign soon. It's time I was a mother to my babies." Reaching over to pick up a framed picture of herself, Alex, and Jason from her desk, she handed it to the Doctor. "Jason's sixteen months already, and I don't want to miss any more of his childhood. This one's a girl. We're going to name her Kathryn."

"Beautiful name." He tapped the photo. "Who's the lucky guy?"

"Oh. You don't know Alex?" She thought back to their last meeting and couldn't quite remember when it had occurred. "I thought I was dating him last time… I guess not? We've been married three years now. He's an engineer, works for the city of Palo Alto. Manager, actually, which is why we can afford me not working."

He held the photo out to her and indicated it with his chin. "You look very happy together."

She took it and placed it back on the desk. "We are. He's everything to me. A great father, too. He's coming to take me to lunch, actually, so you can meet him if you'd like."

"I would be honoured."

"So, yeah, everything's great. Life's wonderful." She didn't say anything more, letting the Doctor figure out her implication on his own. She caught his gaze, and after a moment, he nodded and smiled. "So," she continued. "What have you been doing with yourself?"

"Oh, same old thing. Travelling in the TARDIS, as usual."

Traci held up her hand and shook her head. "No, wait. You can't say 'the same old thing.' You've never told me what you do. You're going to have to start with that. What _do_ you do?"

The Doctor seemed puzzled, and he shrugged. "Well, that mostly. Travel around. Meet people. See what I can see. Get into trouble sometimes. Run a lot." He cocked an eyebrow as he gazed off into space. "I do an awful lot of running."

She leaned forward, disbelief evident in her pursed lips. "Really? You just randomly fly around the universe all by yourself?"

"Well," he drawled, "not all by myself. I usually have friends. Right now, I've got a mate. Donna. Her name's Donna. She's at home visiting her mum right now."

"A mate? Good for you!" Somehow, she never even considered that this last Time Lord would find a partner from another species, but it made sense, and she was happy for him.

Panic-stricken, he raised his hands in protest. "Oh, no, not a 'mate'. A 'mate'! A friend. A companion. No, not like that. A…" - he searched for a word - "...a pal… uh…"

Traci got it. "Oh, you mean a mate in the British sense, as in someone you go to a pub with."

"Yes!" He pointed in agreement. "Like that! Donna's my best mate."

"Well, that's good, too." She leaned back in her chair, stifling her amusement at his reaction to the thought that his friend was his partner. In some ways, he really wasn't much more adept than a teenager. "Everyone needs a best friend."

"Aye. Donna's brilliant." His eyes gleamed as he thought about her. "Keeps me grounded, she does. Slaps me a lot." He frowned. "I'd like a friend who'd slap me less."

Traci laughed. "Maybe that's exactly what you need, though."

He grinned. "Probably."

"So that's what you do, then, travel around the universe with your friend in your phone booth, doing Time Lordy things?"

"Police box," he corrected, "and, well, not really. I've never been a very good Time Lord."

Traci didn't know quite how to interpret that statement. "Well, we all try to be the best person we can, don't we?"

The Doctor had been distracted by some train of thought, and Traci's question jerked him back to the present. "What? Oh, I don't mean that. I mean... well, the Time Lords and I never really saw eye-to-eye."

Confused, Traci fiddled with a pen on the desk as she stared at him, then leaned forward. "I… I think the problem I'm having here is that you've never really told me about the Time Lords either."

"Really?" He ran a hand through his hair as he tried to remember. "Thought I did."

"No," she replied, shaking her head at his negligence. "I haven't the faintest idea about the Time Lords, other than that I'm one of you, and that you've got two hearts, and that you see time somehow. That's why you're called that, right?"

"Right. It's called time sensitivity. There are other time sensitive races, but we were the first. Well," and he glanced away, "there _were_ other races, but they're gone now, too."

"I'm sorry, Doctor."

He nodded absently as he thought about what he was going to say. "Well, in a nutshell, the Time Lords, they invented time travel and then established a timestream that the universe should follow, and called it the Web of Time. They used their power to watch over the Web, to repair paradoxes and prevent meddling. I suppose you can say that they watched over the universe."

Traci raised an eyebrow. "They sound like police."

He shook his head slowly. "No. That implies more direct action than is appropriate. I think the term I've heard that I like the best is 'senators'. They created the Laws of Time, then upheld them. They had a strict non-interference policy and would only act if the laws were broken or the Web of Time was endangered."

"Non-interference?"

"Right. Meaning that they wouldn't get involved in other species' affairs, or influence the outcome of events. In practice, it's very difficult for non-time-sensitive races to affect the flow of time." He eyed her narrowly. "If you think about it, how would you go about creating a paradox?"

Tapping her chest, Traci furrowed her brow in confusion. "Me? I don't even know what that means."

"Exactly!" He wagged a finger at her. "So, you see, there was honestly very little for the Time Lords to do. For the most part, they simply observed."

She leaned her elbow on the desk and propped her chin in her hand. "Still, it sounds like it was fascinating work, overseeing the entire universe."

Grinning, the Doctor waved a hand at the stacks of files surrounding them. "Well, yes, given that you've chosen law as your career, I'd say you'd take to it."

Traci returned a sly smile. "But you didn't. You said you're not a good Time Lord."

The Doctor leaned back in his chair, grinding his teeth in embarrassment. "Let's just say that I tend to stick my nose into things that they wouldn't approve of."

"Interfering?"

"Oh, just go on and say it! But yeah. I like to help." He shrugged. "They'd say it's not my decision to make, who wins or who loses, but, I suppose I just don't like to see senseless death, or defenseless people taken advantage of."

She leaned back in her chair and stroked her chin, frowning. "I can see their point. I mean, if you have the ability, it's very noble to champion the wronged and the downtrodden, but vigilante justice has its own pitfalls. It's very easy to make a mistake in judgment, or to decide that your own definition of good is the right one."

"Oh, agreed. I've made mistakes before, and I'm sure I will again." Thinking with a slight brooding air, he chewed on the tip of his thumb for a moment. "It's one of the reasons I like to travel with companions. They keep me honest, show me points of view that I haven't seen. But," and his eyes locked with hers again, "I think it's better to act on your convictions, than to do nothing and let people suffer." He tapped his chin with his fist. "Not that I don't agree with what the Time Lords did. They had the responsibility of making sure the universe progressed as it should, and they devoted their lives to it. I did, too. Whilst I travelled, I also tended the Web of Time. I just couldn't see sitting still in a room on Gallifrey, waiting for something to go wrong. It just wasn't me."

Traci nodded a few times, pensive. "If you don't mind my asking, if the Time Lords are gone, who's making sure everything doesn't veer off course now?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No one, really. Things are wilder. The future is uncertain. Events that couldn't be changed before can be manipulated now. I do what I can when I find problems, but I'm just one man."

"One man guarding the whole universe."

The Doctor laughed at that idea, his self-mockery apparent. "Not possible. I really can't make much of a difference, but I can do things here and there."

Gazing at him with friendly suspicion, Traci shook her head slowly. "Somehow, I think you do a lot more than you say." Straightening in her chair, she adjusted her unwieldy body carefully. "I have to say that this is the first time becoming a Time Lady has sounded enticing. Administering the Laws of TIme! It sounds like something I would have loved."

The Doctor tugged on his ear with a sheepish grin. "It didn't occur to me that it might."

Traci smirked. "Yes, well, you're the one who doesn't always agree with it. It sounds like perfect work to me! Though," and she patted her belly, "not anymore. I've got so much more to worry about now."

Traci's phone trilled again. "Hold on a moment," she murmured to her guest as she fished it out and flipped it open. "Hey. Great, I'll be right out." Hanging up, she grinned at the Doctor as she stuffed the phone back in her pocket. "That was Alex. It's lunchtime." As she began to push herself up out of the chair, the Doctor hopped up and, skirting around the desk, offered her a hand, which she took graciously. "Thanks." Taking a moment to straighten her dress, she trundled around the desk then paused, covering her mouth with her hand like she was swallowing against nausea.

Concerned, the Doctor took her arm to support her and leaned in close. "Are you all right?"

Nodding, she blinked a few times, to compose herself. "Yes, I'm fine, thank you." Looking up at him, she could tell he didn't quite believe her. "No, really, I'm fine. I'm just.. I guess I'm just scared."

"Of what?"

Embarrassed, she laughed at herself. "Of having Alex meet you."

"Oh!" The Doctor waved a hand, dismissing her apprehension. "No worries. He won't be able to tell I'm not human. No one can, really. Well, until I start talking. And then they usually just think I'm barmy."

This time, Traci's laughter was for him. "I can see that! But that's not what I mean. It's like..." She shrugged. "It's like I have this secret life hidden away and I'm finally letting it meet my real life. It's like I'm letting Alex meet my lover. Which," she hastened to clarify as the Doctor stared at her, his left eyebrow flying up to his hairline, "is not at all what's happening here but you get the idea. If this were a movie, this is the moment at which everything starts to fall apart and the main character loses everything."

Shaking his head, the Doctor stepped back to his chair to retrieve his coat, slipping it on. "That's just films. Nothing's going to happen. We'll exchange a few pleasantries and you'll go off to lunch, and Alex will ask you what planet you get your strange friends from. You'll even have an answer for him. Just make sure you keep a straight face." He flashed an impish grin. "Been there before, you see. And anyway, I met your friend Deb, last time I visited, and nothing bad came of that."

Traci smirked. "Deb doesn't count. She's not the father of my children and the person I'm spending the rest of my life with."

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he rocked forward on his toes. "You also don't have a secret life you're keeping hidden from everyone. You have just one life, a brilliant one, which happens to include an alien who visits you every so often, takes a few minutes out of your day."

She snorted at his statement. "You think that's normal?"

"It is to me." Another mischievous grin.

"I'm being silly, aren't I?"

"No, you're not. But honestly, you're you and you live your own life, and I couldn't change that, even if I wanted to; you'd never allow it. And I'm sure Alex knows that. I'm not a threat to him in any sense of the word, because your life is with him." He offered his arm to her.

As she absently hooked her hand on his arm, Traci nodded as she thought. "I guess you're right. I made that decision a long time ago, didn't I?"

"As to what is your real life, what you're devoted to? Yes."

Traci frowned. "If you're so sure about that, why do you keep coming back?"

His answer was immediate. "To see how you're doing. I _am_ keeping your options open, I'll admit that. But you've never wavered on what you want to do." He patted her hand on his elbow. "Maybe that'll change someday, but not now, not when you've so much here for you."

She smiled. "I do. I'd never risk losing Alex. Or my babies." She hugged his arm. "Thanks, Doctor. I feel much better."

"Good!" Leading her toward the door, the Doctor bowed as he held it open for her and she passed him.

"Thank you, kind sir," Traci giggled at his gallantry as he took his place beside her and they walked out toward the lobby.


	9. Chapter 9

Sitting on the sofa with Mikey in her arms, Traci rocked the baby while Katie marched her toys around the floor, regaling her mother with the story of how Lady and the Pumpkin were leading the dance at the Princess Ball. Mom had her legs straight out in front of her, as the little girl liked having the Prince and Princess promenade down them like they were the grand stairway into a ballroom.

"But how does the Pumpkin dance? He doesn't have legs," Mom asked.

"Don't need! He rolls and Lady dances." Katie rolled the stuffed pumpkin all around the floor, giggling as it tumbled over the other toys. She began running around the room, rolling the pumpkin up the walls and furniture, over Mom and the baby.

"No, Katie, not on Mikey." Traci held the baby up so that he was pumpkin-free, and the girl ran past them. Luckily, Mikey remained oblivious to the gourd-based assault. On her second circuit of the room, Katie climbed up on to the sofa and stood next to her mother, poking a finger at the baby, who took hold of it.

"Can I feed Mikey, Mommy?"

"He just ate. He should take a nap soon. But you can feed him when he wakes up." She had been afraid that Katie, who loved to fight with her older brother, wouldn't take to the new baby, but she'd turned out to be a mom in miniature, always asking to help with him.

"Okay." Just then, the doorbell chimed. "Jay-Jay?" She jumped down and ran to the front door.

"No, sweetie. Jason's at school. He won't be home for a while." Hugging Mikey to her shoulder, she rose from the couch and stretched her torso, then followed her daughter, who was now trying to work the doorknob. "Coming!" she called.

At the door, she used her free hand to pull the door open, then immediately bent down to restrain Katie, who she knew would run out of the door if left to her own devices. Thus, she had to identify her visitor from his brown pin-stripe trousers, the hem of his long coat, and his cream sneakers.

"Doctor!" she exclaimed without looking up. No one else dressed like that.

"Hullo! And who is this?" Dropping to a squat, he grinned at the little girl, who scooted behind her mother's legs.

"This is Katie. Come on, sweetheart, say hi to the Doctor."

Katie peered out at the strange man, then shook her head and dodged back behind Mom. Traci laughed. "I usually can't stop her from jumping on everyone she sees, but she's smart, you see. She already knows the word 'doctor' means being poked and prodded and jabbed with sharp things. Come on, sweetie," she coaxed as she looped her arm around her daughter's shoulders and squeezed, "go back to the living room." She nudged the girl in the right direction and Katie wandered off slowly, staring back at the Doctor as she walked.

Once they both straightened up, Traci invited the Doctor in. "If you don't mind, I should change Mikey and put him down for a nap. I'll be back in a few. Make yourself at home."

"Thank you."

Traci watched him follow Katie into the living room, and as she carried Mikey to his room, she hoped that her daughter would be okay with the Doctor in the room.

She needn't have worried. When she returned to the living room twenty minutes later, the Doctor was sitting cross-legged on the floor peering into a sofa-cushion fort. Katie's "gzhrrrrrr!" noise emanated from inside, and when it stopped, she leapt out at the Doctor into his arms, giggling. Taking a firm hold of her, he flipped her upside down, then rose to his feet and swung her around the room once, before depositing her on the armchair next to his discarded coat.

"I'm glad you two made friends," Traci commented, smiling delightedly.

"Mommy! The Doctor made me a time machine! I'm a Time Lady! We saw Queen Lizabet!" She jumped down from the sofa and latched onto the Doctor's leg.

Traci was horrified. The thought that her children might be half-alien had never occurred to her. The Doctor immediately caught the look on her face, and he hastened to assure her, "No! No no no, no no! She's not. She's human. Completely human!"

"Are.. are you sure?" She stared at her daughter hugging the Doctor's leg.

"Oh, yes. I'd know if she was Gallifreyan in any way. I'd hear her." He tapped his temple. "You're human and your children are human."

Traci breathed a sigh of relief, but her apprehension darkened her mood. She knelt down and gently detached Katie from the Doctor. "Go on and fly in your time machine. Why don't you see what you're gonna be when you grow up?"

"Okay!" Katie dove back into the fort and the time machine's engines started up again. "Gzhrrrr!"

"Coffee? Tea? Soda? Juice?" Traci motioned the Doctor towards the dining room, from where she'd be able to watch Katie playing and hear Mikey if he woke up.

"I'd love a cuppa, thank you. Tea, that is," he clarified when Traci frowned in confusion at the British term. He took a seat at the dining table and watched the little girl as Traci fetched the beverages and a plate of cookies. Depositing the refreshments on the table, she checked the two children one more time before joining the Doctor.

"Are you sure…?"

The worry must have been plain on her face, for the Doctor leaned forward and squeezed her hand. "I am. She's perfectly human." He slid the saucer towards himself and, selecting a packet of Earl Grey, began preparing his tea. "Thank you."

She sighed. "Good. Because I don't want them to…" Her sentence trailed off.

"I know." He smiled comfortingly as he poured the hot water into the cup, then leaned back while it steeped.

"No, you don't." Traci took a sip of her coffee to still her nerves. "The last couple of years have been terrifying. I've been so afraid I'd be found out."

"What?" An eyebrow arched high as he stared at her, concerned. "Why?"

"All the aliens." Just the thought of them made her shiver. "It's like suddenly everything wants to invade Earth."

Comprehension dawned on the Doctor's face. "Ohh! The Sycorax. Then the Cybermen."

"Oh, you heard about them then? Then the spiky spaceships with the eyeballs this year. And other things, smaller things, like that hospital that disappeared in London. They said aliens took it to the moon." She had selected a cookie, but it was forgotten in her hand as she remembered the incidents.

Frowning, the Doctor studied her face, thumbing his chin as he thought. "All in the last two years for you, weren't they?"

"Yes." Traci felt somewhat privileged to have someone she could talk to about this, who might be able to make some sense of it. "Why is it, Doctor? Why are aliens coming to Earth now? It's not because of me, is it?" Her last question was quiet and timid.

"Oh, no!" His immediate, emphatic negation dispelled the worry that had nagged her ever since that spaceship appeared over London and controlled a third of the human population. "They've been coming to Earth for millennia. They just haven't been so obvious."

"What? How could we not know?"

"Well," he drawled as he picked up his teacup, "there are plenty who you can't tell. Everyone assumes I'm human, for one. Then there are species that disguise themselves or hide. And they aren't all hostile. Some are very peaceful." He toasted her with his cup before taking a sip.

Traci gaped at the Doctor for a moment. "I, uh, I don't know whether to be horrified that there are aliens everywhere, or relieved that I'm not alone."

The Doctor returned his cup to the saucer and picked up a cookie before replying. "There aren't aliens 'everywhere.' Their numbers are quite few. I'd be surprised if you've met a single one. Well," he drawled, "except for me, of course." He stuffed the cookie in his mouth.

"Well, there's plenty of people who think that there are aliens everywhere, living among us, and they've been trying to unmask them. One of those groups had a rally at City Hall. I was so scared walking past them." She shuddered at the recollection.

Swallowing the last bit of his cookie, the Doctor shook his head. "Humans. Always so afraid of anything new, anything they don't understand." He reached over the table and placed a hand on her arm. "Traci. You don't have to worry. Your physiology is completely human. No one on this planet has the ability to identify you as anything but human. No one in this galaxy, even."

She suppressed the urge to yank her hand away from him. "Except you. You were able to tell."

"Because of the watch, and because I know what to look for. Time Lords are a myth to most people, so they wouldn't even think to look for one." He squeezed her arm. "If it makes you feel safer, don't carry the watch with you."

Somehow that didn't feel like an option; the watch almost felt like a part of her and she couldn't just leave it behind. On the other hand, it was also the thing that made her feel the most alien, and thinking about it only lent to her insecurity. Traci turned the Doctor's arm over and grasped his wrist, feeling for his pulse. When she found it, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply while she felt it. Presently, she opened her eyes and withdrew her hands from his, smiling sadly. "Sometimes I check my heartbeat, just to make sure. It's comforting to feel yours again. Because it's not mine."

He nodded. "I'd no idea the planet was being affected like this." Taking another cookie, he nibbled on it as he thought. "There's nothing to be done about it. Humans have to learn to cope on their own."

"How?" she blurted out before she could stop herself. "These aliens can fly through space and have laser cannons and things! What are we supposed to do against them?

"You humans have more defenses than you know. You just seem to like keeping such things secret." He popped the rest of the cookie in his mouth and grabbed another one.

"If you say so," she replied, not really believing him. "Even so, it's still terrifying. What those aliens can do. That hypnotism thing, people all over the world were hypnotized to climb up on the highest building they could find and jump to their deaths. They say that they shot the alien ship down just in time." She shuddered. "It was the middle of the night and I just found myself on the edge of this building a mile away, in my nightgown. I didn't even know how I got there! And when I got home, Alex said he hadn't been able to stop me, because he had to stop Jason." She took a gulp of her coffee to calm herself. "They say it happened all over the world. How can they even do that?"

"It's called blood control." The Doctor waved a dismissive hand. "It's a parlor trick: they got a bit of A-positive blood and controlled people through it. They couldn't have made you jump, though. Your survival instinct is too strong and you wouldn't have jumped if they tried. Well, they did try. Well, honestly, it wasn't them who tried."

Traci frowned. "How would you know that?"

Leaning back in his chair, he cocked his head as he airily explained, "Oh, it's an ancient technique. I hadn't seen it in years."

Staring at him suspiciously, she leaned forward over the table. "No, that's not what I mean. How do you know that's what they were doing?"

Sipping his tea, he replied with a flippant wave as he set his cup down. "Oh, the Sycorax? I was there."

Traci blinked as her jaw dropped open. "You were on that spaceship?"

"Oh, yes."

"You were _with_ the invaders?" Her voice cracked as she glared at him.

"What?" He scowled as he started with disbelief. "No! I was there to negotiate with them, so they would leave the Earth alone."

"Negotiate?" she spat back at him. "What negotiation? We shot the ship down."

"Oh, no." He sat back in his chair, relaxing. "That was after the Sycorax left. They were shot down as they were leaving in peace."

Traci blinked, trying to comprehend what he was saying. That wasn't what she had heard, and it just didn't make any sense that the Doctor, of all people in the entire universe, had been there, talking to the alien invaders. "That's just ridiculous! You're saying that in all of time and space, you happened to be on the Sicarite -"

"Sycorax."

She fumed at him. "Sycorax. Whatever. You were on their spaceship just at the moment they invaded this planet?"

"It was the result of a string of unlikely events involving game shows in the year 200,100, a refusal to go to the planet Barcelona, and thermos full of tea, but yes, I ended up there." His sunny expression suddenly turned puzzled and he scratched his head. "That kind of thing seems to happen to me a lot."

Crossing her arms, she straightened and glared at him like a schoolteacher listening to her student's preposterous excuses. "And I suppose you're going to say that you were there when all those ghosts appeared and turned into robots?"

"They're called Cybermen. Remember, I mentioned them earlier." An amused smile curved the Doctor's lips. "And yes, I was there."

Shaking her head, Traci continued staring at him with a look of utter disbelief on her face. "Doing what?"

"Figuring out how to get rid of them." His expression darkened for a moment. "Sucked them into the Void, we did."

Traci smirked at him. "And the spiky spaceships?"

The Doctor leaned back and wagged a finger at her. "Now that, I don't know about. With eyeballs, you say? Don't know what those are. But it's always possible I'll be there in the future. Don't know."

Traci threw her hands up in frustration. "But that was earlier this year!"

"Well," the Doctor drawled as he rolled his head back in that odd habit of his, "my future. Your past. Oh," and he straightened up in his seat with an eager grin, "but that hospital on the moon. I was there, too."

"No." Crossing her arms, Traci set her lips in a firm line. "That's just ridiculous. I don't believe you."

"Honest! The Judoon used an H2O scoop to take the hospital to the moon. They were looking for a plasmavore who'd probably killed someone important." He stared absently out of the window. "I never did find out what she'd done."

She shook her head. "How can you possibly...? That's just too much coincidence! The universe is huge! Why would you be on Earth so often, and in the middle of all these aliens?"

The Doctor waved an open hand at the rest of the world around them. "I like the Earth. One of my favourite planets."

Taking a cookie, Traci bit off a piece as she regarded the Doctor with narrowed eyes. "So is that what you do, then? You're like Earth's diplomat to the universe."

"Oh, nothing so official." He shrugged. "I just happened to be there and saw something to do. I'm not a good Time Lord. I interfere. Told you that. I'm supposed to just let aliens invade a planet if they want, but I can't stand by and watch that. I really can't do a whole lot, but I try."

"Not a whole lot? You averted two alien invasions by yourself. That's amazing!"

"Oh, I wasn't alone. I always have my friends helping me. You can't discount them. But really, you didn't need me." He leaned forward and patted her hand encouragingly. "You humans are capable of all that. There are organizations that protect the Earth from hostile visitors. You just don't know about them."

Traci stared at him. She was quite sure he was prevaricating, whether out of humility or perverse pride, she couldn't tell. He seemed to relish confusing her, but didn't want to claim credit for these events. She shook her head slowly. "No. I don't believe you. In all the time I've known you, you've never talked about yourself, and when I ask you anything about you, you change the subject, or you tell me just the bare minimum. I wouldn't be surprised if you're lying to me, when you tell me about yourself. I don't think you just travel around and see the universe. I think you do a lot more than you say, and I think that's what you like to do. But you don't like anyone knowing who you are, do you?"

Sniffing, the Doctor sat back, his shoulders falling just a tiny amount, revealing his embarrassment and something else that Traci had never seen in him before: vulnerability. When he spoke, his voice was low and contrite. "I'm just a wanderer, Traci. Really I am. Yes, I can't stand by and watch people die, and I get involved more than I should, but all I am is a wanderer." He glanced out the window for a moment, then turned back and raised his eyes to her. "You're right that I don't like to talk about myself and I try to get out of it every time. But I have never lied to you. Well, once. That negotiation with the Sycorax was conducted with longswords."

Those few sentences told Traci more about him than all of their many conversations had before, and she felt privileged that he'd opened up to her even that much. Tracing the rim of her coffee cup with a finger, she peered up at him, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "I think you're a lot more complex than you're letting on. But I won't push you. Everyone has their secrets." Gathering up her courage, she barrelled on. "But, you know, Doctor, there's one thing that's been bugging me for the past, oh, I don't know how long, and I think it's important. Enough to ask you directly."

The Doctor frowned. "Oh? What's that?" he asked, clearly bracing himself against the expected personal question.

"You've visited me now, what, five or six times? You show up whenever you feel like it." She caught his gaze and held it with her serious stare. "What if _I_ would like to see _you_? I don't have any way of calling you, texting you, sending you a letter or a carrier pigeon or whatever. It's really not fair that I have to wait for your whim."

Astonished, the Doctor blinked twice, then his mouth dropped open. "You actually _want_ me to visit?"

Traci bobbed her head in an exaggerated nod. "I like getting together with my friends every so often, yeah."

The Doctor's face broke into the most brilliant, toothy smile. Traci had never seen him so delighted. Straightening in his seat, he clapped his hand to his mouth as he began musing on the puzzle. "Well, I don't usually give people the ability to call me, but... I could adjust your phone, but if you lose it or get a new one... Oh! I know what you always have. Give me your watch."

"What?"

He beckoned peremptorily with his hand, as if it was the most urgent request in the world. "Your watch. Your chameleon arch."

"Okay..."

As she went to find her purse, the Doctor began rifling through the pockets of his jacket, dumping a large pile of objects on the table that included a neon green water gun, a red leather ball, a magnifying glass, a white paper bag with colored lumps in it, a flashlight, what looked like a gold-colored video game controller, and a half-completed sock with knitting needles and a trailing ball of blue and brown yarn.

"How are you carrying all that stuff?" Traci asked as she returned and handed him her pocket watch.

Taking the watch, the Doctor placed it on the table in front him, then pulled a silverish rod from his inner breast pocket and began working on a small doodad from the pile of miscellany. When he pointed the rod at it, the device whirred merrily and its end glowed blue. "My pockets are dimensionally transcendental."

Traci had heard that term before, but it took a moment for her to remember where. "Oh! The TARDIS. It's like the inside of the TARDIS."

Grabbing the watch, the Doctor grinned without looking up. "Fair play t'you."

"What?"

He looked up, confused. "What?"

"What did you just say?"

He thought about it for a moment. "Er, I said you got it?"

"If you say so."

He had already returned to fiddling with the watch. Traci watched him silently as he worked, curious as to what he was doing to her prized possession. Presently, he straightened up with a proud smile.

"Here we are!" He handed her the watch back. It now had a chain attached to it, and on the ring that connected the chain to the watch hung a small round charm etched with a design similar to that on the watch cover. "It's about time your watch had a fob chain."

She examined it, then commented, "It's very pretty. How do I call you with this?"

"Well, the charm is actually a button." He reached over and tapped it with his finger; it flipped over to reveal more interlocking circles on its back. "Just squeeze hard and hold it for three seconds, and it'll call me. Not too long, though. Five seconds and it'll knock out all electronics on the block for a half an hour. Handy if you need an excuse to skive off work."

Taking the charm in her hand again, she rubbed her thumb over the engravings. "And it'll call you? Even if you're millions of light years away, or back with the dinosaurs or something?"

"Yup." He beamed, rather pleased with himself. "Transtemporal frequency. I'll get the signal. Anywhere, anywhen."

Traci bit her lip, but she couldn't hold back her grateful smile. "Thank you, Doctor."

"Mommy!" Katie lay giggling under a pile of sofa cushions. "My time machine is broken! Can the Doctor come fix it?"

Traci adopted a mock stern stance. "What do you say, Katie?"

"Please?"

Traci smirked at the Doctor. "I don't know. Doctor, do you think you can fix it?"

"Certainly! Looks like your friction contrafibulator needs recalibration." Hopping up, he strode into the living room and slid to the floor, dragging the girl from the pile and swinging her out of the way. Rebuilding the fort, he assured Katie that it would never break again, and Traci, sipping her coffee, watched the two as they traveled from Earth to the planet Alzarius in a strange dimension, to the Italian Renaissance to meet Leonardo da Vinci, to Mars in the year 10,000. As he painted elaborate verbal portraits of far-off places and times for her and she populated them with fantastic creatures and elegant lords and ladies, the child's imagination shone in her bright wide eyes, her enthusiasm and spirit mirrored in his. Traci found herself wishing that she, too, could see these wonders and coughed to hide her embarrassment at the irony. When it came time for the Doctor to leave, Katie clung to his leg once more, begging him to stay, and biting his lip, he glanced at her mother as he apologized to the girl. Traci took Katie into her arms, and with one last tiny smile that conveyed his gratitude and contentment, the Doctor spun and strode out of the front door, disappearing in a blur of brown.


	10. Chapter 10

Grabbing her keys and phone from the counter, Traci dashed for the door but paused before yanking it open, spinning back to gaze at the mess of groceries on the counter and still in their plastic bags. She hoped she had gotten all the perishables into the fridge, but she really didn't have time to worry about that now. Pulling the door open, she ducked into the garage and jumped in her car to head back out. She'd had the presence of mind to not close the garage's automatic door, knowing she wasn't going to be in the house for more than a few minutes. As she backed into the street, she thumbed the opener, and as the door slowly descended, she sped off. Well, with as much speed as she dared on a residential street that was usually teeming with playing children.

As she drove towards Katie's school, she mentally reviewed her schedule for the next couple of days. After she picked up all the kids from their respective activities (oh, Sara was a godsend, offering to babysit Mikey today), she had to head home to make dinner and then, after the meal, drop off Mikey at Alex's mom's so that the rest of them could attend parent-teacher night at the school. She'd be baking items for the bake sale for the rest of the evening, probably well into the wee hours of the morning, then the next day, while the kids were at school, there was Mikey's doctor's appointment, then cleaning the house and cooking a full dinner for Alex's friends (Tom and Shawna, and Jim and whoever he might be seeing this week), not to mention getting Jason bundled off to spend the weekend at his friend Josh's house. And then Saturday was the Girl Scout bake and craft sale, all day, something that Katie had been excited for over the past two weeks.

At a stoplight, she banged her head against the steering wheel a few times. She loved her family, more than anything in the world, and would do anything for them, but she just wanted to have a little time for herself. What would be great would be a few days to go off somewhere, with no one asking her to do things and no one that she had to talk to. Of course, that wouldn't work. She'd tried a few times to tell the kids, "Mommy's going to go read in her room by herself for a little while, ok?" and each time, within fifteen minutes, one of them (or their dad!) interrupted for _something_. She couldn't go an hour by herself; a few days was out of the question.

Slipping the car into one of the spots in the school parking lot, she grabbed her purse and trotted off to the art classroom. Ms. Price was standing in front of the closed door, bag on her shoulder and arms crossed, with Katie standing by her. "I'm really going to have insist that you pick Katie up promptly at four o'clock," she stated, glowering as Traci approached. "I can't be standing here waiting for you all day."

Katie ran to her mother and Traci took her hand, smiling at her daughter and murmuring, "Hi, sweetheart." She looked back up at the art teacher. "I'm really very sorry. It's been such a mess today and I was running late -"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure it's been awful. See you next week." Ms. Price stalked off. Traci rolled her eyes, then snuck a peek at the phone in her purse. Seven minutes late. She really needed to get Katie into a class with a different teacher. Traci didn't need the attitude, and she wondered how this woman treated the kids when no one was watching. The few times that she'd been here before four o'clock, she'd observed that the teacher had shut down the activities fifteen minutes early so that she could leave at four; Katie wasn't getting the two hours that Traci was paying for.

She took her daughter's hand and smiled at her. "Come on, little lady. Let's go."

Katie babbled merrily as Traci buckled her into the car seat and drove off towards Jason's soccer practice, telling her mother about all the things she did in art class. It was times like this that made it all worth it: Traci was at her happiest, her most fulfilled, when her children were happy, excited about their lives and what they were doing. She continued to ask Katie questions, to encourage her daughter to relive happy memories and reinforce them.

A short drive later, she freed Katie from the carseat and they ambled off towards the soccer field at the recreation center. She easily picked Jason out of the crowd of boys chasing the black-and-white ball around and waved, but she knew he wouldn't see her, engrossed in his favorite sport. As was her habit, she led her daughter to the playground; Jason knew to find them there after practice was over.

As the little girl ran off to climb on the jungle gyms, Traci found an isolated spot to sit on a low wall. Pulling a book out of her purse, she smiled to herself, about to enjoy a few minutes of solitude set to the music of laughing children, when Anna, the mother of one of Jason's friends, sat down next to her and began chatting. Stuffing the book back into her purse, Traci engaged her in conversation while silently wishing she could turn invisible. It wasn't that what the woman had to say wasn't interesting, or that Traci didn't have anything to talk about. It was simply that she had had enough of people taking up her time. But it wouldn't do to take her frustrations out on her acquaintance. She smiled politely and said all the right things, but the end of soccer practice couldn't come soon enough.

Anna's son arrived first, and Traci bade her a cheerful farewell as the woman waved and headed with the boy to her car. Jason then trotted up and, before Traci could call Katie to them, he blurted out, "Mom! Can I stay for a while more? Coach Miller wants to run extra practice, and he asked me special!" Hopping from foot to foot, he was obviously trying to conceal his delight about being selected; only the best boys got asked to stay later.

Traci felt pressured by the activities of the evening to get home and get started on the baking, but she couldn't deny her son this honor. "Of course you can! Not more than a half an hour, though. Is that ok?"

"Killer! Thanks, Mom!" He jumped and punched the air, then sprinted back to the field.

"Knock 'em dead!" she shouted after her son, smiling proudly. The circle of mothers around the playground had thinned, as many had left with their soccer-playing children, so hopefully now she would get a little peace.

Reaching back into her purse for the book, her hand brushed the cold metal of the pocket watch, and she pulled it out. She always had it with her, but she rarely ever looked at it. It appeared incongruous in the bright sunlight, the antiqued brass dull, almost ancient. She wondered if the pattern of circles and lines etched on the front had any meaning, or if they were just decoration. It was certainly pretty. With a finger, she flicked the little charm the Doctor had added on his last visit and it tinkled against the larger body of the watch. _I wonder…_ Impulsively, she squeezed the charm between her thumb and forefinger, releasing it a few moments later.

"Oh, man!" The woman sitting on the bench off on her right slapped her thigh in frustration. The tablet she'd been playing a game on had suddenly turned off, and she punched the power button to no avail. "What's wrong with this thing?" A little farther off, Traci saw a jogger stop and fiddle with his MP3 player, smacking it in frustration. She frowned in bewilderment.

"Held it down a bit too long. Told you, three seconds."

The Doctor's voice startled her and she jumped up and whirled to face him. "How… How did you get here so fast?"

Standing behind the wall she was sitting on, the Doctor grinned, eyes twinkling with mischief. "I'm a time traveller. Got the message and landed before you sent it." He pulled the blue-tipped silver rod from his breast pocket and, holding it hidden under his other hand, he activated it, pointing first at the woman's tablet and then the jogger's music player. Traci glanced at them as the device chirped and saw the screens of each flicker on. "There. They at least won't suffer for it." He flipped the rod, caught it, and stowed it back in his pocket, looking pleased with himself.

Traci flicked a hand at his pocket. "What is that thing? Some kind of remote control or something?"

"Sonic screwdriver."

Crossing her arms, she pursed her lips, regarding him with sarcastic disgust. "Oh, come on. That's just ridiculous. You can just say it's an alien thingamajig if you think I won't understand."

He stared at her with a hurt look. "No, really." He pulled the sonic back out and held it out for her. "It's a screwdriver."

Taking it, Traci turned it in her hand to inspect it. "A screwdriver that turns on iPads from fifteen feet away? And it works by sound somehow?"

"Well," he drawled, "it started out as a new type of screwdriver. It's changed a bit since then." He shrugged. "You know how it is. Decide that you need to add a hyperdimensional actuator, and next thing you know, it's three days later and you've rewritten the base software and added an isotemporal spectrometer, a transhoroterical analyser, and a database of chocolate biscuit recipes." Staring at the device, he scratched the back of his head. "I never did get that actuator added."

Traci blinked at him. "Let me think." She bit her lip and rolled her eyes in mock thought, then shook her head. "No, I can honestly say I don't know how it is." She handed the screwdriver back to him. "Hello, Doctor."

"Traci." That shining smile. She couldn't resist returning one of her own. His eyes remained fixed on her face as he slipped the screwdriver back in his pocket.

"It's good to see you." She felt an impulse to give him a hug, but it felt awkward. She definitely considered him a friend, but she wasn't sure how close of one he was.

The Doctor glanced around the park, at the playground and the playing field. "Splendid day! Ah, football!

"What?" She frowned at the practicing kids for a moment, then remembered the alternate term for the sport. "Oh, you mean soccer."

"Ah, yes. Wrong term, isn't it?" he commented as his eyes followed the ball down the field. "A fine sport. Though, I'm more of a cricket fan, myself. Perhaps in the future I might try it out."

"I've never been interested in it either, but Jason loves it." She pointed at one of the boys. "That's him there. The one running after the one with the ball."

Following her finger, the Doctor picked out the right boy. "The one with the red shoes? Good taste, he has. So that's Jason."

Traci frowned. "Oh! Yes. The last time you were here, only Katie was home with me and Mikey. She's in the playground, just over there, on the swings."

The Doctor turned and spotted Traci's daughter immediately. "She's grown so much!"

Traci rolled her eyes. "Of course she has! It's been, what, four years since the last time? She's in third grade already." With a sly grin, she glanced up at him. "She remembers you, you know."

Completely taken aback, he spun back to Traci. "She does?" One eyebrow was cocked high.

"Well, not you specifically. But every so often, she builds her time machine out of the sofa cushions and goes exploring with her imaginary friend, the Doctor." Amused, she watched him to see his reaction. When Katie, at three years old, had clung so persistently to her new "imaginary" friend, playing "time machine" every day for nearly a month, Traci had worried about the alien's influence on her daughter. It hadn't helped that Alex had been thrilled with his daughter's sudden interest in space, gushing, "A time machine that's also a spaceship? Only _my_ daughter could come up with something that cool!" and had encouraged her to play pretend every chance he got. However, it had simply been a phase, and while Katie had moved on to the next childhood obsession in due course, her occasional play sessions as a Time Lady never failed to make Traci smile.

Turning back towards the swings, the Doctor gazed at the playing child with a pleased but embarrassed grin. "I'd no idea."

Traci hid a smirk behind her hand, pleased to have set him off-balance a little. "But yeah. It seems like time never passes as fast as when you're watching your kids grow up. I always wonder where the years go. Mikey starts kindergarten next year, you know."

"And this is the time you wish would never end." He swept his coat back to stuff his hands in his pockets and, with delighted wonder, watched Katie as she jumped off the swing and ran to play on the merry-go-round.

"If only it were always so idyllic." At that statement, the Doctor glanced at her, an eyebrow cocked in surprise. She laughed. "Oh, I'm not really complaining. It's just that, when you're a mom, there's really not much time to do anything else. I wouldn't give up my babies for the world, but I would love to even just have a conversation that wasn't with or about children."

"Well! That I can provide!" The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward in almost a bow. "What would you like to talk about? Or…" and his eyes twinkled, "... where would you like to go? Or when?"

Surprised, Traci stepped back, blinking a few times as she processed his implied offer. "Oh!" Then she smiled and shook her head. "No, I couldn't."

The Doctor's face fell. "Why not?"

"I can't just go running off like that. I'm watching Katie, and Jason's at practice over there for only another twenty minutes." She pointed in the directions of her two children.

"Katie can come along, if you like. Plenty of space in the TARDIS. And the point of having a time machine is that you can return to whenever you want." Stepping towards her, he nudged her gently with his elbow. "Whaddaya say?"

She glanced at Katie before shaking her head again. "No, I can't. I really can't."

"C'mon." He stepped back, holding his hands out to his sides as if he were holding up the universe for her to see. "Anywhere in time in space. You'll be gone for less than a minute, if you like."

Indecision tore at her. To run off and leave her family behind, even for a few minutes... It felt like she was cheating. And she supposed the little button she carried in her purse was a cheat, calling this strange alien to her side any time she wanted. Looking up at him, she saw both mischief and concern for her in his eyes.

"Why are you doing this?" she blurted out before she could stop herself.

He frowned, rocking back on his heels. "What?"

"Why are you offering to take me somewhere? Especially now? You haven't offered that in years." She cocked her head to the side. "You're not just trying to influence my decision, are you?"

"No!" He appeared appalled at the suggestion, and he ran his hand through his hair. "I was just trying to help. Honest! I just… I just thought you wanted a break."

"I do! But not like that!"

"Why not?"

Something in the tone of his voice made her glance up at him. His brow was slightly furrowed; she could see that he was furiously trying to figure out what the problem was. A sudden insight flashed through her mind: he really didn't understand her, or possibly any human, at all. He seemed to like to fix things, but she didn't need, or want, fixing, and his presumptuousness angered her. "I didn't call you because I wanted you to help me change my life or anything."

"No! That's not what I meant!" Scrubbing a hand through his hair, he sounded exactly like Jason when the boy was trying hard to figure out what he'd done wrong and being over-apologetic for whatever it it was. "I just thought you wanted something different for a bit."

Traci blinked and stared. Maybe _she_ was the one who didn't understand _him_. Or perhaps she was assuming he was more human than he actually was. She realized that she had automatically assumed that he had an ulterior motive for taking her on a trip, and maybe that wasn't fair. As far she could remember, he had always been straightforward with her; strange and unexpected, maybe, but not deceitful. She leapt up from her seat and spun away, massaging her temples with one hand across her eyes. "Look, Doctor," she began as she turned back to him, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have… I mean, I know you were just trying to be nice. I think…" She sighed. "I think I might be more stressed out than I thought I was."

The Doctor smiled kindly. "Whatever you need, Traci." He gestured at the pocket watch still in her hand. "I'll come whenever you call, whenever you need me. I promise."

She sighed. "Maybe I do need that little trip. Alex calls it 'decompression.' An old college term, for taking some relaxation during finals week." She stowed the watch back in her purse. "Just a moment, okay?"

Traci trotted off to ask Liza, one of the other mothers, to keep an eye on Katie for ten minutes. Receiving assurances that she'll be looked after, she returned to the Doctor. "Okay, I'm ready."

"Are you sure you don't want to bring her with us?"

Traci bit her lip before answering. "Uh, no. No offense, but I really don't want to get Katie… involved."

"Of course not." The Doctor bowed with great gallantry and indicated with his hand that she should precede him.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

It was a short walk to the blue police box, which was parked next to the recreation area's gym. Traci felt her face reddening as she realized that the people in the area were about to see her climb into a narrow booth with a man. "Um, Doctor?" she murmured as she halted, still a hundred feet from the TARDIS.

"Hmm?" He came abreast of her and turned to face her as she played nervously with the strap of her purse.

When her meaningful glance toward the box failed to elicit a response from him, she groaned inwardly before stating her reservations out loud. "I can't go in there with you."

"What?" His eyes darted toward the TARDIS, then back at her, puzzled. "Why not?"

She was speechless for a moment. "Two grown adults, climbing into that little box? In plain sight?"

"Oh!" From the look on his face, it was obvious he had never before been concerned about such a thing. He spun around, scanning the area. "I could move the TARDIS behind there, if you like?" He pointed behind the dance center building, which was backed by a copse of trees.

"Yeah, I guess that'll be fine."

"Hold on just a tick." Fishing his key out of his pocket, he strode to the police box and, unlocking it, disappeared inside. As the repetitive groan of the time machine crescendoed, Traci trotted off to the meeting spot, goggling at the people around her who didn't seem to notice the phone booth-like structure fading out of existence. She was still apprehensive about sneaking behind a building, but it was nowhere near as questionable as the first plan.

Traci had only been in the TARDIS once, nearly twenty years before, and stepping into it again was nearly as shocking as it had been back then. As the Doctor closed the door behind her, she wandered up the ramp, staring around at the huge room crammed in the tiny police box. "I don't know how you can get used to this."

"She amazes me every time, even after all these centuries." His voice was reverent, and as Traci spun to look at him, she could see the awe and pride in his eyes. "So!" He bounded up the ramp and leaned against console. "Where can I take you?"

Traci thought for a moment. "Anywhere?"

"Yup."

"In all of time and space?"

"Yup." He began bouncing on his toes as he waited for her decision.

She rubbed her face with both hands, then threw her head back and laughed. Grimacing sheepishly, she admitted, "All of time and space, and all I can think is that I just want some time to get the baking done for the sale on Saturday."

An excited grin slowly spread across the Doctor's face. "That, I can give you! There's all the time in the universe in here, Traci! I'm sure we can spare you a little. Where do we start?"

Astonished that he was offering to help her with her baking, she clapped a hand to her chest and stammered. "Oh! I... I'm not sure. I mean, I've got all the ingredients at home. I just bought them an hour ago. But, Alex will be home in an hour, so I should be starting dinner." She tried to think like a time traveler. _When could we have the kitchen to ourselves?_ "Um… Well, we'd have to find a time when the kitchen was empty. Oh! We took the kids to the zoo three months ago. That would be perfect!"

"No need for that. We'll do it in here." The Doctor had spun to the console and worked its controls, sending the craft lurching into flight. They both grabbed onto the railings to steady themselves.

"In here? You've got a kitchen?"

"Among many other things I rarely use, yeah. I've got to eat sometime, you know. Mind you, it's usually easier to get take-away." When the shaking subsided, the Doctor hopped to the door. "Come on."

Traci stepped out of the TARDIS into her own living room. "Oh my god! You didn't!" She spun around to see the police box parked in front of the sofa. For a moment, her mouth worked soundlessly as she stared, incredulous, then she started laughing. "You are just ridiculous, Doctor!" She followed him into the kitchen.

"Are these them?" He picked up two of the bags of groceries.

"Most of it." She yanked open the pantry and squatted to check the lower shelves. "I've got more flour and sugar here."

"Never mind that. We can use the TARDIS' stores." He tried to adjust the bags in his arms so he could pick up the last one on the counter, then thought better of it. "Could you grab this last bag?"

"Really? Thanks!" Standing back up, she took the bag of groceries in her arms, then snagged her recipe book from atop the fridge. "I think that's all we need."

They returned to the TARDIS, where the Doctor sent the ship back into flight, then led her to the kitchen, remarking that he was letting the craft drift in space around a red giant in same arm of the galaxy as her solar system. The kitchen wasn't too far away from the console room, but they passed multiple doors on the way, and with each step, Traci's eyes grew wider.

"Just how big is this place?" she gaped.

He stopped and elbowed a door open. "Just in here. Pretty big. More than I ever use."

Stepping through the door, Traci was stunned by the huge modern kitchen, furnished with multiple counters, two large sinks, two stoves, and four ovens. Every utensil she could think of, and far more that she suspected weren't of Earth origin, depended from hooks on the walls and racks hung from the ceiling. "This is enormous! You cook so much that you need a kitchen like this?"

"Oh, no. I'm sure the TARDIS knew what we needed and set this up for us." The Doctor slipped past her to deposit the groceries on the center island.

"Wha-?" Traci sputtered a bit before continuing. "You're saying this... this... this spaceship, it's actually thinking? And changes things around on its own?"

The Doctor had begun unpacking the bags, lining up the ingredients in a neat row. "Oh, yes. She's very helpful. You've quite the assortment of ingredients here. The pantry's right there, if there's anything else you need." He jerked his head at a door near one of the stoves, then turned to her and clasped his hands behind his back. "What are we making here?"

Traci was still gawking at the room, and, shutting her mouth with a _pop_ , she blinked a few times. "Okay. Yes." Striding to the island, she began unpacking her bag. "I wanted to make some cupcakes and some lemon tarts. And a whole bunch of cookies."

The Doctor's eyes lit up at the last suggestion. "Oh! I'm not much of a baker, but I can do that last one."

"Okay, then, let's do it." She grabbed an apron from a coat rack near the door and tied it on.

Traci and the Doctor spent the next few hours in a whirlwind of flour, sugar, and confections. Each of them claimed two ovens, so there was little delay in the baking of batches, and the kitchen was large enough that they didn't get in each other's way at all. The TARDIS' pantry was extensive, stocking both dry and fresh ingredients, and Traci found that she couldn't resist taking advantage of it, delving into her recipe book for unusual baked goods and recipes she hadn't had the chance or the bravery to try. This resulted in batches of cherry brownies and cheese pockets, and some raspberry petits fours, even though those took her longer than she had intended.

Despite the Doctor's claim that he didn't know how to bake, he seemed to do just fine, his array of cookies growing at a steady rate. Though she never saw him refer to any recipes, she noticed that he often used the utensils she suspected were alien in his cooking, and occasionally he pulled out his screwdriver and held it to his ear, listening to it intently, before heading into the pantry to fetch ingredients.

The long period of work gave them plenty of time to do so something they hadn't ever done before: simply chat. The Doctor inquired after the strangest, most boring things, asking her for stories about her family, what she did at home all day, what her kids were doing. Traci loved to talk about her children, of course, but that was a conceit every mother shared: everyone wants to talk about what's important to them, and few people ask for them to do so. The Doctor did, however, and he was an attentive listener, asking minute questions about details that interested him and delighting in every tale that Traci offered.

Oddly enough, she found it difficult to steer the conversation in a direction that would help her get to know him better. He was very deft in taking any topic she might ask him about and steer it back in her direction, except when she asked about where he traveled. He definitely didn't care to talk about himself, but he reveled in sharing with her the planets and peoples he visited. And what a storyteller he was! His words sparkled and breathed, and the pictures they formed in her mind were so vivid, she felt she was standing on the threshold of the TARDIS, seeing them all for herself. His zeal for exploring new places and times was so infectious that the scant time she spent baking in the TARDIS was the closest she'd ever felt to wanting to open her watch, just so that she could join him and see these things for herself.

"You make the universe out there sound so enthralling," Traci remarked after the Doctor's description of a planet colonized by humans in the far future, whose people had been forcibly evolved into two separate societies, one weak but highly intelligent and technical and the other physically strong and savage. "Don't you run out of new things to see, since you've been traveling so long?"

"The universe is vast, Traci, far larger than you think." He was sprinkling chocolate shavings on a batch of spooned dough balls in preparation for putting the pan in the oven. "If I decided to visit each galaxy and spend a single day in each one, I'd die of old age before seeing even a tiny fraction of them. I'll never run out of new things to see."

Traci placed her mixing bowl under the mixer and switched it on; the computer-controlled appliance blended the batter to the perfect consistency as she waited. "I'm surprised that you come back here to Earth so often then. This planet must be boring to you by now."

"Earth is one of my favourite places!" he exclaimed as he placed the cookie sheet in the oven and set the timer. "Humans are so brilliant, so vibrant. Look here." Leaning across one of the counters, the Doctor snagged a bottle of candy decorations. "See this? Edible ball bearings. Invented by humans and utterly unique. You humans are splendid!"

Traci threw her head back, laughing. "The silliest little things really catch your attention, don't they?"

The Doctor tossed the confection bottle from hand to hand. "There's wonder everywhere, Traci, for anyone who cares to look for it."

"Oh, I don't know. Cupcake decorations just don't hold my interest." She noted that they obviously held his, as he opened the bottle and tossed a few silver beads in his mouth. "I guess I've never really been one to explore, but there are plenty of people who do. One day, we'll travel to the stars and see all of these wonders that you do. It's sad it probably won't be in my lifetime, but..." She faltered as she remembered that she did have the option of traveling to the stars, if she wanted to take it, and tried to cover it up by taking the conversation in a different direction. "I suppose for now we have to be content that the stars seem to be coming to us. Sometimes I think that Earth must be a interstellar turnpike or something, with all the aliens traipsing through."

The Doctor tossed back another handful of silver sugar balls. "No more than most places. As I've said before, aliens have been visiting Earth for ages. They've just been a slight bit more discreet than they are now."

"I'll say." She moved back around her counter to claim the batter bowl from the mixer. "I don't know how we've been able to fight them off. Like those robots when there were all the planets in the sky."

Startled, the Doctor poured far too many decorations into his hand and spent a moment pouring them back in. He capped the bottle and licked the last few beads out of his palm. "Robots with planets in the sky? What?"

"Yeah. Everything went dark, like the sun had gone out, and it looked like there were other planets up in the sky. Then these robot things started attacking, killed a lot of people." She shuddered as she remembered. "After a while, they all disappeared, and then there was an enormous earthquake and everything was back to normal. Well, other than all the destruction." Her tone was sarcastic.

He scratched his head. "I wonder what that was all about. Seems like the Earth survived, though. Perhaps I'll encounter that in the future." He shrugged.

"If you do, tell me about it." She began portioning the batter into the muffin tins in front of her. "No one really knows what happened. That and that other time, that mass hallucination. Everyone looked like the same man. And they said there was another planet in the sky, over Europe."

The Doctor stared at her with one eyebrow cocked. "Sounds like some interesting times. If I ever find out, I'll let you know."

Traci grinned. "I'm looking forward to finding out what that stuff was all about. But…" Traci hesitated a moment. She wasn't sure if this was something she'd be allowed to ask. "There's something I've always wondered about, if you're willing to tell me."

He leaned on the counter with an encouraging smile. "Anything, Traci. What is it?"

Her question was low and tentative. "Will you tell me about Gallifrey?"

The Doctor froze. The question obviously startled him, and it was a moment before he nodded. "Of course I will, Traci." His voice was soft and serious, and she hastened to give him an out.

"You don't have to if you don't want to. I know it's a painful subject."

"No." He caught her gaze and held it to emphasize his sincerity. "I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"It's okay?"

"Yes." His smile was sad but encouraging.

She barely whispered, "Thank you. I'd like to know about my home."

Still leaning on his elbows, the Doctor stroked his chin with one hand as he peered at her. "You've seen it before, in your dreams, haven't you? Your memories as a Time Lady bleeding into your dreams sometimes?"

"I think so, but it's so hard to remember them."

He nodded. "That happened to me, too, when I was John Smith. Wrote them down as soon as I awoke, so that I could remember them, though they made little sense to me at the time." He bit the tip of his thumb. "What have you seen?'

Frowning, Traci leaned against the counter behind her as she tried to call up the images that danced just out of her mind's reach, as if they were compelled to stay hidden but longed to be remembered. "I've seen… I think I've seen great vast halls in a city with soaring towers protected by a glass dome under an orange sky. Like the way they always show kings and grand palaces in movies, all marble and tapestries everywhere. But there's also computers and technology and robots and things." She shook her head, trying to straighten her thoughts out. "It's almost like it's two completely different places. There's always lots of people. Mostly young people, but I think that might be because I'm picturing people I was going to school with, maybe? Everyone's in robes, and they're a lot of different colors but I'm always wearing red and orange. And there are two people that show up all the time. They might be my parents." She glanced up at the Doctor. "Is that right? Is that who they are?"

"Could be. I can't know for sure." Pushing off the counter, he spun to check the oven, then moved to start working on a new batch, while Traci removed her bowl from the mixer and began spooning the batter into cupcake shells set in a muffin tin. "But the pictures in your mind, they're accurate. Gallifrey was a mix of futuristic technology - well, futuristic to you - and ancient laws and traditions. And yes, the Capitol was enclosed in an enormous, transparent sphere. Not glass, of course. Set against the mountains of Sola -" He broke off, biting his lip, then laughed quietly to himself.

Setting down her bowl, Traci took a step toward him. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

He rubbed at the back of his neck with a floured hand. "Nothing. I was being myself. So typically myself." Rolling his eyes, he gazed up at the ceiling as he traced his upper lip with his tongue. "I was about to tell you about the beautiful skies and meadows and trees around the citadel, and how, when the seasons change and the twin suns rise over the mountains, the land itself shines like fire. All the fantastic imagery I paint for my companions that dazzle their imaginations but ultimately mean nothing. I mean, it's all true. Gallifrey was a beautiful planet, grace and splendour in the cities as well as the countryside." He caught her eye and shook his head. "But that's not what you're asking, what you want to hear. You want to know about your home and the life you should have had." He sniffed. "And I must remember that you're not my companion. No matter the form you're in, at heart you're a Time Lady, the only other member of my species in existence, and I should pay you the honour and respect that you're due. No equivocations, no pretty words to placate your curiosity. It's always so easy to talk my way around any situation, but I won't do that to you." Grinning, he held up one finger to ask for a moment. "Let me just gather the ingredients for this next batch."

As they continued their baking, the Doctor described for Traci the typical lives of Gallifreyans and Time Lords. Though he had no knowledge of her parents and family, he illustrated how life might have been like for a child of Time Lord parents who was destined to train at the Academy to follow in their footsteps: the discipline instilled in her from the moment she could speak, the hundred years of schooling, and her path after becoming a Time Lady, entering the profession she would likely occupy until she died. He described some of the things a Time Lady have chosen to do, giving preference in his fashion to those that sounded flashier, such as study the complex science of stars as a stellar engineer, ensure the integrity of the Web of Time as an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency, or going into politics.

For her part, Traci listened to the Doctor in awe. The life of a Time Lady sounded horrible: serious and determined, without joy. And yet, though the Doctor obviously had no interest in living such a life himself, his words and phrasings acknowledged the importance of the Time Lords' work, and Traci could not help but be fascinated. She also felt some amount of pride, that though she had no idea who she might have been in that life, she had applied herself for a hundred years and successfully graduated from the Academy, become a Time Lady, achieved what very few people in the universe had the opportunity to even attempt. For the first time, she could imagine herself as this unknown person, so much greater than simple Traci, and she had to concentrate on the cupcakes she was baking for her daughter to keep herself grounded. There still wasn't a question in her mind - Alex and her wonderful children were her universe - but for once, she could feel her Time Lady self waiting patiently for her.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

"I think," Traci began, as she finished individually wrapping the lemon tarts and began arranging them in their box, "that we overdid this a little bit." Her counter was stacked with baked goods, and the Doctor's cookies were spread over two counters, cooling.

"Too much?" Pausing as he tied up a half-dozen bag of cookies, he tilted his head, gazing at her with a worried expression. He had streaks of flour up one cheek and all over his blue suit, as well as through his hair; he had obviously run a dusted hand through it.

She laughed. "This is way more than I'm supposed to bring. About four times as much." Closing the tart box, she wandered over to the cookie pile. She hadn't looked before, but now she could see that the Doctor had baked many different kinds of cookies. "Whoa! What are all these?"

He held up the bag he'd just tied. "These are Florentines. Not baked, actually. Bit of chocolate shortbread over there. These are your basic chocolate chips." He grinned proudly at his handiwork. "These here are ilmarazons, though I used chocolate instead of salringi syrup. And these are Toupkachian seylids. They've got a sweet that goes well with chocolate, especially when you…"

"Wait. These are alien cookies?" She picked up a seylid and held it up, staring at it. She had no idea why she let these things surprise her anymore.

"Not all of them. Those over there are Scottish macaroons. These, though, are from…" He faltered as he caught her horrified gape, and his delight faded into contrition. "I did it again, didn't I? Too much weird?"

"I can't sell alien cookies!" She shook the cookie at him. "What do I call them? What if people get sick?"

The Doctor waved his hands in front of her. "Oh, no no no! They're safe! I'd never give you anything that wasn't. Honest! Go on, you can eat them." He glanced at the cookie in her hand.

Brow furrowed, she hesitated, then took a small nibble of the seylid. Her eyes widened as she almost spit out the crumbs in surprise. "Oh my god. This is fantastic!" The chocolate and a tart but smooth fruity substance swirled through the airy, buttery cookie. She couldn't resist taking another, larger bite. "Why'd you say you can't bake?"

"Oh," he shrugged, "I just followed the recipes. I only chose the easy ones."

"Recipes?" She glanced around for a book. "I didn't see you working off recipes."

He pulled out his screwdriver and held it up. "Recipes! I told you I had a database of chocolate biscuits."

"Biscuits?"

"Oh!" He grinned. "Yes. British word for cookies."

"I had no idea!" She stepped back and surveyed the mounds of baked goods. "Well, if you're sure they're safe, then I guess it's okay." He grinned like a boy who'd just been told he was going to Disneyland.

They spent the next half hour bagging up sweets in sellable portions, then packing them in boxes. Organized neatly, the boxes took up nearly two large counters. Tapping a box with one hand, Traci shook her head. "If I take these home, no one's going to believe I did this, this afternoon."

"Take what you need to show you're done, and I'll bring the rest to you at the sale itself." Jamming his hands in his pockets, the Doctor flashed her a hopeful smile that she'd accept his offer.

"You'd do that for me?"

"Anything, Traci."

"Thank you, Doctor." Stuffing a leftover ilmarazon in her mouth, she began setting aside the boxes she wanted to take home.


	11. Chapter 11

It had been the hardest three days of Traci's life. What should have been a great afternoon watching Jason's soccer game with Mikey turned into chaos when the drunk driver ran the red light and plowed into the side of the SUV. She had gotten out of it relatively unscathed, while Jason got a concussion, bruised ribs, and a broken arm, and Mikey… What she wouldn't give to have been in their place! But she, Alex, and Katie were reduced to spending their days outside of the ICU, pouncing on every tidbit of news, waiting for the moment that Mikey came out of the coma.

She had stayed up in Jason's room to make sure he was okay and tried to keep his spirits up, until he told her that he understood that she wanted to be as close to Mikey as she could be, right there where she'd get all news right away. "I'm fine, Mom", Jason had said, "so go down to Mikey." Her older boy was growing up to be such a fine young man. Thus, she stayed down by the ICU, watching, waiting. She tried to occupy herself with her knitting, but every time, within a few minutes, she would stuff it away impatiently. She appreciated Alex's efforts to keep conversation with her, but she eventually told him that he shouldn't bother, that it wasn't working. While Katie staked out a corner of the waiting room doing her homework and texting her friends, Traci paced, or poked around the corridors, or sat in a chair, staring at her hands and seeming dead to the world.

Through it all, she could still hear the screams of her two sons as the other car flew out of nowhere and smashed into them. And though her rational mind reminded her that the other driver had been drunk and out of control, her heart chanted, _It's my fault. It's my fault. If I'd watched better, I would have seen him coming and not entered the intersection. If I'd just accelerated more, we would've gotten out of the way. The car wouldn't have hit him dead on. I didn't protect him. I didn't save him._

It was mid-afternoon on the third day that the doctor came out of the ICU, his face serious. Traci later did not remember at all what he had said. She only knew that Mikey had died. He had held on for three days, and she'd hoped that it meant he was still fighting, but ultimately his body couldn't heal from all the trauma.

Traci knew that Alex was holding her tight, stroking her hair, but she couldn't feel him, couldn't hear his sobs in her ear or his ragged words of comfort and love. Mikey was gone. She hadn't even been able to see him since the accident, locked away in the ICU, and now he was gone forever. Her world had collapsed around her, and she was trapped in a bubble, screaming her anger and misery to a universe that heard and cared not. She felt her legs buckle beneath her, and Alex half-guided, half-carried her to a nearby chair, then sat beside her, cradling her to his chest. She could hear her wails and feel her tears burning her cheeks, but they didn't sound or feel like they were coming from her. Here, inside her, all was black, and all she could feel was pain.

But it wasn't silent. Fragments of thoughts, visions, voices, screams whirled through her mind, mostly memories of Mikey, but also bits of her rational mind trying to reassert control. She knew Katie was standing right there and needed her mother to help her cope, but Traci couldn't even take care of herself; how was she supposed to help her daughter? And Jason, up in his hospital room, injured in the same accident; he needed to be told, too. Her mind latched onto anything it could in its search for stability. _I've got to call Alex's parents. And the school. Need to get his things from the school. How do we find a funeral home?_

"Oh god. Oh god. Oh god," she gasped. She felt another pair of arms encircle her: Alex had gathered Katie to them, and she threw an arm around her teenage daughter, holding on to her for dear life.

"It'll be okay, Mom. It'll be okay," Katie murmured, her voice broken by sobs.

 _Listen to her. Thirteen years old and she's so much more in control than me._ Traci pulled Katie's head down to her and kissed the top. "Oh, sweetie… Katie... Oh god. Oh god." A new wave of tears erupted.

 _Why?_ she screamed to herself. _He was only ten years old! What's the point? What's the point of putting him here then taking him away from me? I don't want… I don't want…_ She abruptly jumped up from the chair, shaking off her startled husband and daughter. "I need… I need... Oh god..." She ran down the hallway, crying, and heard Alex's words to Katie, "Don't. Let her go."

Running down the stairs exhausted some of her emotional energy, but she still emerged from the stairwell with her eyes clouded with tears. As she stumbled towards the main entrance of the hospital, searching for an exit, an escape from the reality she couldn't accept, a large brown blur came down the hallway toward her, and, trusting her instinct, she ran into its arms.

"Traci. I've got you. I've got you. I'm here."

The Doctor held her tightly, his coat encircling her, shielding her from the world, as she sobbed uncontrollably. After many minutes, she gasped out, "Doctor... Doctor... Take me… Take me away from here. Far away. Please."

She had no idea where he led her, and only became aware of her surroundings when she heard the peculiar grinding noise emanating from the TARDIS' central column. She stared at it, her face blank, until it ground to a stop, then she mechanically marched to the door. The Doctor slipped past and pulled the door open for her, and she stepped out onto the grassy bank of a river, over which a bridge led to a futuristic city. The air was fresh and clean, and unseen birds, or alien bird equivalents, chirped and trilled.

"Where are we?" she croaked. Her voice didn't want to work properly.

"New Earth. Outside the city of New New York. About five billion years in your future. I thought you might like some fresh air and new scenery."

 _Five billion years_. She stood on the fragrant grass and gazed at the city, with its soaring towers and flying cars. She might be sunk in her grief, but her eyes could still take in the vista. In a way, it was comforting to see this new place, to be so far removed from the worst day of her life. And yet, it was still today, still now, still mere minutes since…

She forced herself to avoid such thoughts; they only hurt more. The Doctor shrugged off his coat and spread it on the grass, then helped her sit down on it. When he joined her, he put his arm around her, and she laid her head on his shoulder. The tears came again, and as she cried, the Doctor embraced and comforted her, supporting and strengthening her though no words passed between them. Eventually, her sobs lessened, and she gazed at the city and the river, lost in her memories. She wasn't sure if minutes or hours had passed when she spoke again. "Why do I feel so… so secure with you, Doctor? I mean, I just ran from my own family."

A long moment passed before he answered. "Because I take you out of your life for a tick? Give you a break from being human?"

Her lips curved in a sad smile. "I guess being on an alien world helps me ignore all the things I don't want to think about."

"Oh, it's not all that alien." He adopted that friendly professor air that he always used when telling her something new and fantastic. "This is the current home planet of the human race. Well, humans and cats. One of them runs the city. A nice cat. Novice Hame. I should introduce you. You'd like her."

Traci flicked a glance at him; he was staring fondly at the city. It had been a while since her last surreal Doctor conversation, and it felt oddly comfortable. She nestled into his shoulder. _A break from being human, huh? I'm one of the last two Time Lords in the universe. Why would I want to go back, to be human? When it hurts so much…_

"I'm ready, Doctor."

"Hmm?" He glanced down at her. "So soon? We only just got here."

"No." She sat up and pulled her purse in front of her. "I'm ready to be a Time Lady again." She began rummaging for the watch.

The Doctor's hand came down on the opening of the purse, blocking her from rooting through it. "No, you can't."

She scrunched her face in irritation. "Yes, I can. It's my decision, and I've decided it's time. I don't want to be Traci anymore. I want to become the Time Lady again." She tried to pry his hand off the purse.

"You're not thinking straight, Traci. You can't use the watch to run away from your life."

"I can if I want to!" His grip on the purse was too strong for her to break, and she started pummeling his hand with her fists. "Let go!" His arms still around her, he grabbed both of her arms by the wrists, and she flailed against him. "Let me go!"

"Calm down, Traci." His voice was the gentlest she'd ever heard it be. "You know full well this isn't a decision you can make right now. You're hurting and you can't imagine how you can survive, but you will. Mikey will never leave your heart, but you'll get better. You have so much to live for. I know you don't think so right now, but please believe me. You do."

She wrenched herself from his grip and twisted to face him. "Stop trying to tell me how I feel and what's going to happen!" she screamed. "My son is dead! This is the worst thing that can ever happen to anyone! You don't know what it's like! You don't have any idea!"

Suddenly sagging, he shook his head. His exhausted eyes betrayed a misery she'd never seen in him before. "Oh, Traci. I know exactly what it's like."

Traci stared at him with the question burning in her eyes. He'd had children who had died?

"Oh, yes. Children. Grandchildren. I might have had great-grandchildren and more, but I don't know for certain. They're all gone now, of course." He turned away, to gaze back at the city.

It had never occurred to her that this young-looking man who spent his life traveling the universe might have had children, but now she remembered that he said he was nine hundred years old. Of course he would have children. And more. And they were all gone because… "The Time War?" She barely whispered the name.

"Oh, yes."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know." She swallowed. "Doctor? What happened in the Time War?"

Without looking at her, he shook his head. "No. You don't want to hear about that. Not now. Not today."

"No." She caressed his cheek, and he lowered his eyes to her face. "It's time you told me everything, about this Time War and what happened. Whatever it is, it's the most important thing to you, more than just a war, even more than the end of your people. I can tell. What happened?"

The Doctor stared at her, his face grim. It was clear that he didn't want to tell her, so she urged him one more time. "I deserve to know, and you need to talk to someone about it."

He inhaled deeply. "Okay. Yeah, okay. I'll tell you. You need to know." He paused, gazing at the city as he composed his thoughts.

She squeezed his arm. "Tell me everything. Because I know that you don't tell anyone anything you don't have to, do you?"

The Doctor bit his lip, declining to answer. He couldn't look at her as he began to speak. "So. I told you there was a great war between our people and the Daleks. The Daleks... they're a created species, mutated from a humanoid race called the Kaleds and conditioned to hate. Their creator, a Kaled named Davros, his aim was to create the perfect soldier, to destroy every trace of life in the universe. I've met them many times in my travels. Hateful, destructive creatures. The Time Lords managed to keep them at bay, until they decided to declare war on us, to destroy us and Gallifrey.

"It was a terrible war, raging across all of time and all the galaxies. And I was a soldier in that war. I fought on the front lines. I didn't want to. I don't want to kill anybody." His cheek twitched. "I avoided the war for as long as I could, helping those that got overrun by it however I could. Eventually, though, it became obvious that it was spiraling out of control. Our people were once the most respected race in the universe, presiding over the Laws of Time, but the war had gone on for so long, they became no better than the Daleks. All they cared about was the war and their own survival, no matter what stood in their way. And so I decided to become a soldier, to try to end the war if I could."

He looked at Traci and shook his head. "But it doesn't work that way. You can't end a war by becoming a part of it. You become just another soldier. I fought, and I killed. Not just Daleks but their allies. And I'd be a fool if I claimed that I never hurt our allies. Call it collateral damage or friendly fire or whatnot; it's all the same. I've long lost count of how many lives these hands have taken." He stared at his open palms, and a tear rolled down his cheek.

Presently, he dipped his head, his eyes closed, then inhaled deeply before continuing. "By the end of it all, the Daleks were winning, and the Time Lords were getting desperate. I tried to stop them, I did, but I couldn't. I failed. They wouldn't listen. They began calling up horrors that should never have existed, to fight for them. They used the forbidden weapons in the Omega Arsenal. But it wasn't enough. The Daleks kept coming, and if they defeated us, they would take the war to every planet in the universe, to exterminate all that was not Dalek."

The Doctor looked directly at Traci, held her gaze as he spoke. "The Time Lord High Council was ready for this. When Arcadia, Gallifrey's second city, fell, they decided to enact the Final Sanction. They would transform into beings of consciousness, to exist eternally, by destroying time itself."

Traci stared back at him, brow furrowed in non-comprehension. "What? What does that even mean?"

"Simply put, they were going to destroy the universe to save themselves. That's what the Time Lords became, after all that war. The great protectors of the universe, running scared, willing to destroy all of creation so that they didn't have to die." The disgust on his face was mingled with the embarrassment of being one of them. "So I stopped them."

She frowned at him, her eyes wide and terrified. "How?" she whispered.

"There was one weapon left in the Omega Arsenal, the one weapon that none of the Time Lords would use. It was called the Moment, the most powerful weapon in the universe. I stole it. And then I fired it. I convulsed the time vortex, destroying the Daleks and the Time Lords, no matter where they might have been, as well as who knows how many planets, stars, galaxies across the universe. And I convinced myself that destroying two mighty civilizations, killing billions, trillions, uncountable numbers of beings in order to end the war was the right thing to do." He buried his face in his hands. "So much blood," he choked, then fell silent.

When looked up at her again, his face and hands were dripping with tears. "So, you see, I do know what it's like to lose my child. I deliberately and knowingly killed each one of my own children. And then I had to go on living. That's my punishment. I outlive everyone, and I remember them all."

Traci's entire body was numb. When he had first told her about the Time War, all those years ago, she had been unable to even imagine the scale of the conflict. The death and destruction that the Doctor had just described were orders of magnitude greater than that, and all caused by the man cradling her, a man she knew to be gentle and compassionate, whom she trusted so much that on the worst day of her life, she had fled from her own family for the comfort and strength he could provide. She couldn't imagine that the Doctor could choose to kill one person, much less countless trillions, but here he was, admitting to multiple genocides. But it all seemed irrelevant, as the horror that truly gripped her was the revelation that their own people had intended to save themselves by sacrificing the rest of the universe. She couldn't comprehend it - couldn't believe that she could have been a part of that - and sat staring at the Doctor in horrified awe, her mouth hanging open.

The Doctor mopped at his face to dry his tears, then regarded Traci with sad, ancient eyes. "Come on. I'll take you home."

Startled, Traci drew back. "What? Why?"

The Doctor's eyes surveyed her entire face twice before he replied. "I've seen that look before. I know what it means. And it's so much more coming from you."

Shaking her head, she threw her hands up in confusion. "What? What look?"

"Anger. Condemnation. Hatred, even." Resigned and weary, he climbed to his feet, his body sagging. "I know what I've done. I'm the greatest mass-murderer ever. It's unspeakable, and unforgivable. And to top it all off, what I've done to you, destroyed what should have been your home and your life. I deserve every ounce of your loathing." He started to hold out his hand to help her up, then thought better of it and clasped it behind his back.

"What? No!" She blurted the words before she consciously thought them. "Why should I be angry with you?"

He drew back and, jamming his hands in his pockets, swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing as his eyes grew wide. Traci immediately knew what he was thinking, that he was horrified at her cruelty in requiring him to confess again - the second time would be no easier than the first - and she hastened to explain. "You had to do it. You had to stop them. Both sides. If you hadn't, the universe would have been destroyed, by one side or the other. You saved us from them. There's no shame in that."

"But I killed them. All of them. All of our people. Your family, my family. Billions on Gallifrey alone." He tore at his hair, leaving it more of a spiky mess than normal.

"And if you hadn't, there'd be nothing left. The universe, all the people everywhere, that city there" - and she flung a hand to point at New New York - "all gone. Our people may be gone, but everyone else still lives." Shifting, she crawled forward and grasped his leg. "You did the right thing."

He collapsed to the ground next to her, his hand over his mouth. "I don't know. I'd like to think... But all I hear are their screams."

Traci pulled him to her and held him, stroking his head as it lay on her shoulder. "Then listen to the birds, or whatever those things are, up in the trees on this planet. They're why you did it, right? They're worth it, _I_ think, anyway."

Turning his head, he gazed up at her, the hope in his eyes barely concealed. "You don't hate me, then? For killing them all? For destroying your life?"

"Not at all," she stated without a moment's pause. "Don't worry about me. My life is just a tiny consequence. Gallifrey wouldn't have been my home either way." Her horror at the arrogance of the Time Lords returned, and she set her jaw against it. "And if that's what the Time Lords were like, then I'd rather be human."

He shook his head, pulling back to sit next to her again. "Not all of them. The High Council. Maybe the older and more powerful they were, the more the war affected them."

"Lord Acton."

"Perhaps, but not exactly." He sighed. "We live for a very long time. Probably too long. I think they convinced themselves they were so very important and forgot that death comes to even them."

"Don't think about them, Doctor." She shifted herself closer to him and snuggled into his shoulder. "Come on. Let us mourn our children together." Slipping his arm around her, he held her close and kissed the top of her head.

Traci let herself think about Mikey, and allowed her tears to flow freely. She remembered his face and his voice and all the things he used to do. She watched him play Little League, lost to him at video games, helped him with his homework, tucked him into bed at night. She imagined to herself that he was now free to fly through the universe like the Doctor did, visiting distant planets and seeing strange vistas like the one she was looking at now, and she amused herself by wondering how Jason and Katie would take it if she could show them these wonders. _Nah_ , she told herself, _this is something just for me and the Doctor_ , but it reminded her that though Mikey might be gone, Jason and Katie would always still need their mother. They were still her anchor. There was no way she could ever leave them.

"Thank you, Doctor," she murmured, "for stopping me from opening the watch. You were right."

"Of course I was." She couldn't see him, but somehow she knew he had winked.

"And, thank you for coming for me at the hospital. I don't know what I would I have done." She shivered a little at the thought.

"You are welcome, always, Traci." He held her a little closer. "I'll always be here for you, when you need me."

"How did you know, that... that I'd need you today?"

She felt him shrug. "I didn't, actually. I came to see you in about five months, and you thanked me for coming now, so I knew what had happened and when to come back to."

Stunned, she blinked and raised her head to look at him. "You came to the hospital because I told you that you had already been there?"

"Yup." He popped the "p."

She shook her head. "I never get this time travel stuff." An idea suddenly burst into her head and she shifted onto her knees to face him. "But you have a time machine! Couldn't you just go back a little further and stop the accident from happening, and save Mikey from…?" She couldn't finish the sentence, but she pulled back from him, the plea in her eyes finishing it for her.

Misery flooded the Doctor's face as he shook his head. "No, Traci, I can't do that."

Traci's hands fell dead into her lap as despair crushed her. "You just came back five months to see me! You can just go back three more days and stop the accident! Just find me and tell me not to take the kids to the soccer game, or even just hold me up for fifteen seconds!"

He ran a hand through the hair on the side of his head. "You don't understand. It's not a matter of it being possible. I just can't do that."

"Why not?"

He couldn't look at her. "It's against the rules."

Tracie threw her hands up in exasperation. "What rules? What rules say that my son has to die?"

"The Laws of Time." The Doctor's voice was devoid of emotion. "They were set up by the Time Lords millions of years ago, when they created the time vortex. They prevent tampering with the timestream, and protect the universe from anomalies and paradoxes. I can't cross into an established event. I can't change it."

"That's just ridiculous!" she screamed at him, choking back her tears. "What universe-destroying paradox is going to occur because my son lives? He's just one boy!"

The Doctor shook his head. "There might not even be one. But it's not my decision to make."

Grabbing him by the shoulders, Traci pleaded with him, tears now streaming down her face. "Doctor, please! You have to save my son! You're the only one who can!"

"No, Traci." His eyes glistened with his own tears as gazed at her. "This is what the Laws of Time are for, and I'm the only one left to uphold them."

Sitting back on her heels, she slumped, her head hanging. "Is… is… is this what it means to be a Time Lady? To just… just sit back and watch people die? To hide behind rules and… and… not _do_ anything?"

She started as the Doctor jumped up and paced around her, gesticulating wildly in agitation. "Don't you see? If I could go back and save every child who ever died, I would, but I can't! You're asking me to decide who lives and who dies!" Stopping to face her, he slapped the back of his hand into the palm of the other. "That's what the laws were designed to prevent! No one should have that power. Especially not me."

She reached out with one hand and clutched his leg, peering up at him in supplication. "But you're the one who should! You're a good man, a wise man, and you know what you're doing. You have the power to stop all these terrible things. You can make everything better!"

"And look where that power got the Time Lords!" He thumbed his chest. "The moment I start to think that maybe I should be making those decisions, that I'm above the Laws, I'm already lost. I've already had to do it once, told myself I know what's best, put myself above the rest of universe, decided that my own people had to die. I cannot allow myself to be tempted to do it again!"

Traci crumpled, sobbing uncontrollably. "It's not fair! It's just not fair! I want Mikey back!" she moaned. She didn't resist as the Doctor knelt and drew her into his arms.

"I'm sorry, Traci. I'm so sorry." He rocked her gently as she cried, stroking her hair. The spasms wracked her body, but slowly subsided as her grief was spent. When she stilled, he continued to hold her, comforting her, telling her that she would never be alone. She knew he would be there for her always.

"Doctor?" Even after all this time of resting against him, her chest was still tight, and she breathed deeply to loosen it.

"Yes, Traci?"

Her voice stuttered as her breath continued to catch. "This... this is what you were trying to tell me all those years ago, isn't it? When you told me what a Time Lady does and I said it sounded like fascinating work?" She shook her head against his chest, hiding her face. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't possibly choose to let someone's child die just to adhere to the law."

The Doctor clutched her close again before responding. "Not as a human, you wouldn't, but you would as a Time Lady. You would see things differently, know why it has to be this way."

"I just can't imagine that."

"No." He sighed. "You can't. It's what makes you beautifully, brilliantly human."

Traci looked up to see his wintry smile, and in his eyes, she saw the pain that his own refusal was bringing him, that though she might never understand how he could do so, he was determined to obey his people's laws despite the torment to himself. She saw the truth in his words, that he did care so much, and that he'd helped her so much simply by being there. She held him close, then drew back and returned his tiny smile. "I… I think it's time we went back now. My family needs me. And you've given me the time I needed to… to realize that it's going to hurt for a very long time and I'll never get over losing my Mikey. But I can survive."

"It is my honour to be your confidante." He got to his feet, then offered her a hand up. He then picked up his coat and, shaking it to loose the blades of grass stuck to it, slipped it on. "Back to the TARDIS, then home. But first, a short stop-off."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Where?"

"I promised to introduce you to the person who runs New New York. I think you'll find that if you're looking for harmony and balance in your life, there's no one better to talk to than a cat."


	12. Chapter 12

Traci sat in her car in the parking lot, reading through the to-do list she had scribbled in her little notebook. After all this time working with phones that got smarter and smarter with each passing year, she still found it far more efficient to jot down notes using simple pen and paper. She was probably just being old-fashioned, but she clung to it stubbornly, laughing inwardly as she pigeonholed herself into the old-person stereotype of being obstinate and unreasonable. She wasn't that old - she wasn't even sixty yet - but this was one peculiarity she wasn't willing to give up.

Alex would say that her stubbornness had nothing to do with being old, that that was just Traci in a nutshell. She sneered to herself. Alex could well learn to keep remarks like that to himself.

She'd already crossed off the errands she'd finished: taking the recycling for donation to the local youth center, shopping to refill the office supplies, picking up the parking passes for the next month. All that was left was to hit the supermarket to refill the snack cabinet and restock the coffee and soda. If she could get it all done quickly, she'd be able to get back to the office in time to check the time management system to see if everyone had gotten their timesheets done for the week. Better to get after the slackers today than first thing tomorrow morning.

When she had last worked, the job of the office manager always seemed so easy. Laura, the manager at that data storage firm, kept everything running smoothly and always seemed to be available for a chat with anyone who would listen. Working in the same position now at this software development company, with thirty-five programmers, artists, designers, and testers to take care of, not to mention the management, Traci had no idea how that woman did it. She was running herself ragged trying to keep the office humming along. But, she was starting to learn the tricks of the trade, things that made it look easy to everyone else, and it kept her busy and forced her out of her empty house.

Grabbing her purse, she got out of the car, slamming the door and locking it with the fob. Eight steps forward, she remembered that she needed to get the reusable bags out of the trunk; it had been two years since they had moved away from store-supplied disposable bags, and she still wasn't used to grabbing her own bags on the way in. She spun towards the car and gasped as she spotted the man leaning against her trunk, who hadn't been there just a moment before.

"Hey! Where'd you come from?"

With a mischievous grin, the Doctor pushed off the car and turned toward her with his hands in his trouser pockets, leaning forward with his chin out. "Just seeing if I could sneak up on you." He rocked on his feet from heel to toe, his coat swaying.

"Well, you succeeded. But then you always appear out of nowhere." She set her fists on her hips with a sarcastic expression.

"Not always! Last time, you saw me coming up the walk."

"Only because I made you stop parking that ship of yours in my living room. Before that?"

"You were in your car at Katie's school, reading a book. Not my fault you didn't see me."

"And before that?"

He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "I materialised the TARDIS in your living room."

"And the time before that, too! It scared me half to death!" Traci tried to maintain an angry stare but failed. Smiling affectionately, she dropped her hands to her sides. "Hi, Doctor!"

The Doctor replied with his own wide grin, all teeth. "Hello, Traci."

"And how are you doing?"

" _Molto bene_ , thank you. And you?"

"Just fine. Keeping busy." As she gestured at the store behind her, it occurred to her that the Doctor seemed a bit too perfectly cheerful, and she wondered what was wrong. Not that he betrayed any hint of a concern; he just seemed a bit too flippant, beyond the usual flippancy of his demeanor.

"Excellent! This is the work you were doing the last I saw you, isn't it?"

"Yes, though last time I was only working part-time. I'm working full-time now."

"Wonderful!" He grinned at her, then faltered with uncertainty. "Er... What does that mean, 'part-time' and 'full-time'?"

Traci gaped at him for a moment before she silently laughed at herself. Of course he wouldn't know what those terms meant. "'Full-time' means I work forty hours a week and get benefits. 'Part-time' means I work less than forty and don't get benefits. And before you ask, no, don't worry about what 'benefits' means."

"So..." He rubbed his neck, shifting from foot to foot. "Full-time is a good thing?"

"Yes."

"Well, then," he grinned broadly, "good for you!"

While he clearly didn't grasp why it was a good thing, he was still delighted for her, and she accepted his compliments with grace. "Thanks. It's keeping me on my toes, at the very least."

"What kind of work do you do? Practising law again, are you?"

"No. That would take too much work to catch up on, after all these years." She shrugged. "I run the office for a software development firm. You know, stock the supply cabinet and the snacks, take care of the mail and the phone, make sure everyone has what they need. Kind of a glorified secretary. It's not much. Mostly it's just something to do."

The Doctor cocked an eyebrow at the hint of dissatisfaction in her tone. "Is everything all right, Traci?"

Moving to lean against his vacated spot on the car, she shrugged. "It's been a long year. That's all. Lots of changes. It's been a bit tiring."

He thrust his hands in his pockets. "What's going on?" As an afterthought, he added, "If I may ask?"

Traci laughed at that. "Someone's been teaching you manners. I don't know. It's just growing pains. You know." She fiddled with the keys in her hand, then looked up at him. "Katie graduated last year. Did you know that?"

"No! I didn't! Congratulations!"

"Top of her class." Traci beamed with pride. "She's incredibly smart, and that's not just the mother in me saying that. She wants to be an astronomer or a physicist. I have no idea where she got that from." She eyed the Doctor with meaning. "Anyway, she's going to Caltech now. Isn't that a coincidence? When we took her down there, I drove her past my old house, down on Tremont Street, where we first met."

"So long ago."

"Yes." She eyed him with a sardonic smile. "Though not that long for you."

He wagged a finger at her. "Long enough. Years. I've been spending my time, like you told me to. I just don't do it in the same order you do." His expression softened. "It sounds like she's happy, then?"

"Oh, she loves it! She says she's surrounded by people who are passionate about science, that she feels at home there."

"Brilliant! And how is Jason doing?"

Traci hugged herself before replying, absently rubbing at her arm as she thought about her son. "He's still struggling. All he wants to do is work on cars. He finally got a job as a junior mechanic in a garage, but he's impatient about moving up the ladder. Though I think that's partly because he wants a bigger paycheck. Michelle's pregnant, and he's starting to worry that he can't provide for a family."

The Doctor's eyes twinkled mischievously. "Grandma Traci."

Sneering, she leaned over and socked him on the arm. "Don't say that! Makes me feel old!" But she grinned, her bright eyes betraying her excitement for the little one.

"Makes you feel proud," he stated, his voice soft. Traci glanced up at him and wondered if she detected a trace of envy in his gaze.

"It does. It's just..." Traci stared down at her hands for a moment, then swallowed hard before continuing. "They're gone now, Doctor. They're gone, and I don't know what to do. I mean, I know they're fine and happy, but I miss them so much."

"It's proper hard, isn't it? Letting them go."

"It really is." She glanced across the parking and watched the cars on the street pass by for a few moments before continuing. "For the first couple of months after Katie left for college, I'd just wander into a room and look for her. Every night!" She shook her head in self-mockery. "And I had to stop myself from calling her up all the time. I mean, I knew I had to let go, but even when I did call, it was so obvious she didn't want to talk to me. I was bothering her."

Traci buried her face in her hands, trying to calm herself down. She took a few deep breaths, then looked back up at the Doctor. "I really don't know what to do with myself. The last twenty-three years of my life were spent making sure they were safe and they had everything they needed, and then suddenly," she shrugged, her lips a flat, regretful line, "they don't need me anymore. They don't even want me in their lives. They're living somewhere else, and they have new friends, and they're doing their own laundry. In a way, this is almost worse than it was with Mikey." Her heart clenched a little as she thought about her lost son. "Because they _wanted_ to leave me. They don't even think about me anymore."

"You know they do. You know they still love you." The Doctor's voice was soft and tender.

She nodded. "Yeah. I know they do. But no one says it anymore. It's all so quiet now. I'm so lonely."

The Doctor reached out and squeezed her shoulder, his touch comforting her more than she imagined it would. "You've still got Alex."

Traci coughed a sad little laugh. "Maybe. Not really." At the Doctor's confused stare, she shrugged. "He was getting on my nerves! It was like we had this huge house, but wherever I was, he was, too, and doing exactly what I didn't want him to do. All these little things were just getting to me. It got to the point where I just could not imagine why I married him in the first place, he was so annoying! And I guess he felt the same, too. We've separated."

The Doctor pursed his lips, gazing down at her sadly. "I'm so sorry."

She shrugged. "Well. Yeah. My friend Lisa - I don't think you know her. Well, Lisa's daughter moved out two years ago, and she had the same problem with her husband. So she told me, we'd been Mom and Dad for so long, we'd changed and we didn't know who Traci and Alex were. She told me we needed to figure out who they are and what we love about them. It's great advice, but... We're still working on that. I don't know yet if we can pull this back out."

She puffed out a heavy sigh. "And that's where I am right now. I don't know. I'm so tired. There's nothing for me to do, no one who wants me, you know? I've got this job keeping me busy, and I've taken on some volunteer work. And I have friends, of course. But it's not the same." She suppressed a sniffle; she didn't need to demonstrate just how weak she felt. "But you didn't come here to listen to me complain about my life."

The Doctor's voice was firm and sympathetic. "I came here to see how my friend was doing, good or bad, Traci."

"Good and bad, I guess." She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were chilled, though it was a pleasantly warm day. "I'm ashamed to say this, but I've been thinking more and more about my pocket watch recently. I don't know how seriously, but it's tempting to think I can just move on, go up and out."

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He ran his tongue over his teeth as he considered what he should say. "I… To be honest, Traci, it won't work out the way you think it will. You see, in the end, everyone leaves. They can't help but leave. They have lives to get on with. And Time Lords live a very long time. A very, _very_ long time. Honestly, we just outlive them."

Traci frowned. Judging by what he had told her about how long Time Lords lived and the way they had passively watched the universe, she'd thought that they'd be callous, inured to the loss they must suffer many times over their long lives. "But you said that Time Lords are different from humans. You don't feel the same way. That's why you can stand by and watch bad things happen. You don't care."

"Oh, no," he breathed, shaking his head as he stared into her eyes. "I do care, Traci. I care very much. Time Lords do see the universe differently than humans do, and have different responsibilities, different priorities, and I do have to uphold the Laws of Time. But that doesn't mean that the loss of a loved one doesn't affect me."

For a moment, she saw a deep sadness in his eyes, and on impulse, she blurted out her next question before she thought better of it. "Doctor, you've lost someone, haven't you?"

Jerking back, his mouth twitched a smile for a split second and she knew he had been about to deny it, cover it up. However, the smile fled as quickly as it had formed, and he sighed.

"I've lost lots of people. That's just the nature of my life. Hundreds of years now. More if I were really honest. I live among people that don't live as long as I do, so I can't avoid it." He shrugged. "But that's not what you meant. You meant right now." Rubbing the back of his neck, he continued, though Traci could see the effort he was making to be honest with her. "Yes. Donna's gone. You remember her, don't you? I mentioned her. She was my best mate." His eyes shone with her memory. "But she's gone now. Oh," and his attitude was suddenly bright, as if he had switched his sadness off, "do you remember, you wanted to know about those planets in the sky? Those robots - they're not robots. They're called Daleks, an ancient race…"

Traci had heard that name before. "Aren't those the ones from the Time War?"

"Yes! You remembered! That's the ones. Turns out, they survived. They always survive." Anger flickered through his eyes. "They moved the Earth and twenty-six other planets to the Medusa Cascade to power an engine that could destroy all matter in the universe. Donna was the one who figured out how to destroy it, and we sent all the planets back home. That was the earthquake you remembered."

Traci blinked at him. She knew very well that he got himself into and out of these incredible situations, but the scale of these events never failed to stun her. The Daleks descending upon the Earth and decimating the population had been mind-blowing enough, and now moving planets and destroying the universe? Sometimes he really stretched her ability to believe him. "Really?" she finally gasped out. "That's just ridiculous."

The Doctor grinned fondly at her. "Always something new and impossible, isn't there? But that's what happened." Smirking, Traci rolled her eyes and shook her head at him. "Really. But Donna had to leave after that. She's home now, with her family." He glanced away, gazing at a pair of teenagers strolling down the sidewalk.

"Oh!" Traci smiled with relief. "I thought you said she died. I'm glad she's all right. You should go see her. I'm sure she'd love to have you visit."

"No." The Doctor grimaced, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand. "She doesn't remember me. And she can't see me. Not ever. It would kill her if she did."

"What? How can that...?" Traci's words trailed off at the anger and regret that flooded his eyes. She longed to know what he meant by that, but she knew that further inquiry was not welcome. He shook his head.

"That's how it always ends. She left. They all did, my friends. They came back, to fight the Daleks. Martha, Jack, Mickey, Jackie, Sarah Jane." A slight pause. "Rose. They were magnificent, all of them. But when the threat was over and the universe was safe, they went back to their families and their loved ones. Because when it comes down to it, they have to get on with their lives, and those lives do not include me."

Traci bit back a tear and gazed at him with a sad smile. "I'm sorry, Doctor. It must be so hard..." She sighed. "I suppose it doesn't matter what life you live. Everything ends sometime. There are always going to be goodbyes."

Nodding, he scrubbed a hand down over his jaw. "It never gets any easier. It hits me right in the hearts every time a friend leaves, and there's been so many, long gone now. But what can I do? Can't stop them. If they don't leave on their own, time will steal them away eventually." Glancing at her, his lips curved in a wintry little smile. "No use dwelling on it, really."

She snorted and crossed her arms. "So, you're saying that all I can do is buck up and live with it."

"Your words. Not mine." He shook his head sadly. "If I had all the answers… But I don't."

Traci abruptly stepped forward and hugged him. "We'll muscle on, each in our own way." She then cocked her fists on her hips and gazed up at him. "I don't believe that you just argued me out of opening the watch."

Jamming his hands in his pockets, he threw his head back and laughed. "I surprise myself sometimes. However," and he held up a warning finger, "I want you to open the watch for the right reasons. That's the most important thing. Anything else would be disaster."

"And the right reasons are…?"

His hand returned to his pocket and he faced her squarely. "Whatever they are, you'll know."

"Damn!" she blurted as she spun away. "I was hoping you'd reveal _one_ universal answer." She winked as she turned back to him.

"Oh, no!" he shot back with a mischievous grin. "No easy outs."

Grabbing the purse strap on her shoulder, she jerked her head toward the supermarket. "Care to come along with me while I do my shopping? I'll just need to drop the things off at work, and then we can grab a bite to eat. Keep each other company for a little while, anyway."

"I'd like that." The Doctor offered her an arm, and taking it, she strolled with him across the parking lot and into the store.


	13. Chapter 13

"No, Mom. Not that one. Put it on the one next to it."

Traci stared at all of the dots of light projected on the ceiling, not seeing any real difference between them. One hand clutching the top of the ladder, she held the glow-in-the-dark sticker up with the other hand, about to press it onto the projected "star" she had chosen. "Which one? They all look the same to me."

Her daughter stood on the other ladder, also pasting stickers while she kept an eye on her mother's progress. "Two inches to the right of your hand."

"This one?" She touched a dot with her middle finger.

"No, that's left. Wait, that's _my_ left. _Your_ left. Go to your left."

"I'm just going to put it here."

"Mom!" Katie heaved an exasperated groan. "You can't put it there. The big stars are for constellations and if you put it there, it won't look like Auriga. Just a little bit more to your left. Yes, that one there."

Traci pressed the sticker onto the indicated spot, then sighed and climbed down. "Okay, I'm too old for this. You want the stars in the right place, you put them there yourself." She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Okay, maybe I'll help again later."

Katie laughed as she also descended. "Thanks so much, Mom. You're really making this room come along. I might actually get it done before the baby arrives." She patted her no-longer-so-small baby bump.

Traci shook her head at her daughter's preoccupation with the decor of the baby room. "You really should spend more time putting some shelves up or expanding that closet, instead of creating a galaxy on the ceiling. You're going to want more storage space in here, especially once she reaches four or five."

Katie dismissed her mother's comment with a wave of her hand. "That's still quite a ways away, and by that time, I'm sure I'll want to redecorate this room."

Traci threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, the enthusiasm of new parents! Take it from me, you'll have a four-year-old you'll be chasing around, and maybe another, not to mention your work. You won't have the time or the energy to redo this room."

"We'll see." Her daughter obviously didn't believe her. Katie had always been so motivated, so driven. Perhaps she would prove her mother wrong. "Anyway, I doubt we'll still be in this house in five years. If I don't get tenure, we'll be off to another university. And if I do get it, we'll probably want to move to a better part of Ithaca. But," and she wagged a finger to stop her mother's interruption, "who knows, right? This house is nice enough and we might not want to move while she's still young." She patted her stomach again.

"I'm telling you, it'll be a lot more work than you think." Grinning at her daughter, Traci sat down on the floor and looked up at the ceiling. "The constellations are really coming together. It's very pretty."

Katie's eyes shone with pride as she joined her mother to look over their work. "It'll be even better when I put in the tiny background stars. Then I'll do a different part of the sky in our room. I always loved this area, though. That's Auriga. Perseus. We haven't done Orion yet, but it'll be over there. Cassiopeia. Camelopardalis. I just like saying Camelopardalis."

"Who's Camelop- Camel- Um, Camel-person?"

"Not a who. A what. It means 'giraffe'."

Traci cocked her head to the left then the right as she studied the group of stars. "How does that look like a giraffe?"

Katie snorted. "How do any of these look like what they're called? How did they even choose which of the billions of stars to form the picture with?"

Traci mumbled, "How do you choose stars?" On impulse, she asked her daughter, "Do you think, if you had the chance, you'd go there?"

Katie cast a sidelong glance at her mother. "Go where?"

"To the stars." She amended her statement so that it wouldn't sound so silly. "They're sending out probes and rovers all the time. It's only a matter of time before people go to Mars, and then what's to stop them from going to a new star? It might be in your lifetime."

Katie was naturally a calm and serious woman, so much more like her father than her mother, but Traci could see her fascination with that idea in the way her eyes shone as she stared up at the ceiling. "I'd almost have to, wouldn't I? I'm a planetary scientist. Setting foot on an alien planet orbiting a distant star... that would be my ultimate dream. Though, now I've got Sam and baby makes three. I would never leave them."

"For that kind of trip, I'm sure you'd be able to bring them along."

"They'd have to let me, because that's going to be a slow, one-way trip. We just don't know how to make it reasonable, so we could get there within one lifetime." She bit her lip as she thought. "I mean, the technology's got to exist. Aliens come here all the time. We just need to figure out how they do it."

"Some kind of faster-than-light drive?" Traci suggested. "Maybe even some way of teleporting from one point to another across the galaxy. Otherwise, you'd have to use cryostasis or something like that to make it there yourself." Traci bit back a smile at her knowledge of the possibility of such things, especially the second one.

Katie began to laugh. "Cryostasis? Where'd you hear that? You avoid science fiction like the plague."

"Oh, I've seen a few shows. With all the aliens invading Earth all the time, you have to keep up with that kind of stuff." She looked back up at the ceiling. "I wonder if they come from any of those stars?"

Leaning forward, Katie crossed her legs and peered at her mother. "What's gotten into you, Ma?"

"Why, what?"

"You've never wondered about anything like that before, at least to me."

Traci wasn't sure herself what exactly she was thinking. She hadn't thought about anything beyond her life and her little corner of the planet in a long time. Avoiding her daughter's gaze, she continued to stare up at the stars. "You know how it is. You get older and look back on your life, and wonder if you've lived the life you should have. If there's something that you just missed because you had your head in the sand. I just sometimes wonder if I made the right choices. If I should have gone out there." A distant memory of a glowing nebula teased her, and she shivered to clear it from her mind.

"Gone out where?"

Glancing at Katie, Traci hastened to cover up what she really meant. "Oh, you know. See the world. Or at least kept on with my career. Maybe become a judge or go into politics. I could have done anything." She reached over and squeezed her daughter's arm. "I don't mean I regret my life, you know. I wouldn't give you and Jason up for anything. But I wonder what the other road would have been like, if I had chosen another path. What's out there. What I missed out on."

Katie nodded. "Everyone wonders that, Ma."

"Oh, I don't know about that. You've always known exactly what you wanted to do." A nostalgic smile spread across her mother's face. "Remember when you were seven, you asked your father every day to move to out to the country so that you could set up a telescope. You wanted to be the youngest person to ever discover a comet." As they laughed, she knocked her daughter lightly in the arm with a fist. "And now you're a professor of astronomy.

"As for me," Traci shrugged, "well, law was always interesting, but I really didn't set my mind to it until I had to choose my major in college. It could have easily gone in another direction. I could have gone into teaching, maybe." Gazing at a particularly interesting spot on the carpet, she bit her lip. "But I've had other opportunities, offers to change direction in life. I didn't take them, but I've always wondered what would have happened if I had."

"Really? What kinds of opportunities?" Katie had never seen this side of her mother, and she crossed her arms as she waited for the tale, biting her lip to conceal her piqued interest.

Realizing that she didn't really have anything earthly in mind, Traci scrambled to make something up. "Oh, well, there was this exchange program, with a school in West Germany. The lady at the office, she liked me, and she said she'd push me through, but I chickened out. I even got the application filled out, but I never sent it in. And after college, a couple of friends of mine did some work in Africa, but I was too scared to go with them." Trying to seem wistful, she leaned back on her hands, propping herself up to stare at the stars more. She wasn't completely lying - she really had had the opportunity to go to Africa - but the stories paled in comparison to the most important choice she had turned down. "I could have seen the world, did some good, you know? I even thought about doing international law, but again, I was too scared that I was going to be in over my head."

Katie gaped at her mother, her jaw dropped in astonishment. "I never knew! I just thought you went to college and got a job after, and then left it to have your family like everyone else."

Traci laughed. "Well, honestly, no one's like everyone else, when you really look."

"Yeah, but you're _my mom!_ You're supposed to be boring and normal, you know?" She nudged Traci with an elbow, and the two women laughed.

"I _am_ boring and normal," Traci finally replied. "That's the whole point."

"No, you're not. Not really." Katie gazed at her mother for a moment. "Sometimes I feel like you've got some secrets you've never told us."

Traci smirked, daring to make the obvious confession. "Oh yeah. Big ones. You see, I'm an alien, hiding among all you humans, waiting for my time to go back out into space and go home." She pointed up at a light point on the ceiling. "My planet orbits that star right there."

Katie reached over to push her mother for the joke, making her rock where she sat. "There you go again with the science fiction stuff. But hey, when you go back home to that star, take me with you, okay?"

"I promise that if I go out into space, back to my home planet, you'll be right there with me." Traci laughed airily and looped an arm around her daughter's shoulders to give her an affectionate squeeze.

Katie scooted over to lean back against the nearby wall. "You still can go out there and see the world you know. I know Dad left plenty enough for you to travel on, wherever you want. Or you could do volunteer work. Red Cross or something."

"At my age? Pfah!" She waved a dismissive hand at her daughter.

"Yes, at your age. You're not that old. Dr. Cramer, remember him, back in Boston? He's retired now, and he's in Asia six months out of the year teaching English. And he's five years older than you. You could do that, too." She grinned encouragingly at her mother. "You don't have to choose backbreaking work. I bet you'd love it."

As interesting as it sounded, Traci couldn't imagine doing such a thing and shook her head. "Nah. I couldn't just run off to another country like that. Your father would say that's just me being impulsive all over again."

"Dad's not here to stop you."

"No," Traci murmured, gazing at her toes. "No, he's not."

Smiling sadly, Katie ducked down to peer under her mother's bowed head. "I miss Dad, too, you know."

"Of course you do, sweetheart. It's just that..." She bit her lip, then shrugged. "You know what they say, that you never know what you've got 'til it's gone? I really loved every day with him, but all of a sudden, he was gone, and I had no idea what to do. And you know, he was always so healthy, compared to me with my blood pressure and cholesterol problems and all that. I just always assumed he'd outlive me - you know, that I'd never be without him - so now, well... I really thought I'd never have to live a day without him."

"Aw, Mom..."

"You remember how he always would leave the TV on too loud? I hated all that noise. And now the house is too quiet." She snorted softly, a sad smile playing at her lips.

"You know, you could come here. That offer's still open." Katie thumbed over her shoulder. "You've seen the back rooms. You'd have all of that. And you've never lived on the East Coast."

Traci glowered at her. "You just want a cheap babysitter."

"Well, the thought did cross my mind."

As she laughed with her daughter, Traci wondered if she could actually abandon the life she'd led for the past thirty-five years - quit her job, sell her house, leave her friends - and move across the country to a strange town, where the only people she knew were her daughter's family. And she knew it was the same question she'd been asking herself all her life - could she leave everything behind and accept the destiny that the Doctor had shown her out among the stars? - just on a smaller scale. With both Katie and Jason comfortably settled and Alex gone, there was so little left for her in San Francisco, and, truthfully, here on Earth.

"Mom? You okay?"

Traci hadn't been aware that her thoughts and attention had wandered off. "Hm? Oh, yeah. Just thinking. You know, I probably will take you up on that, just not quite yet. I'm comfortable where I am. I do still love my job, taking care of that office. And my friends are all in SF. I don't think so, sweetie, not right now. Maybe in a couple of years. I've got too much going on."

"You know, I'm so glad that you're keeping busy."

"Busier than I'd like, sometimes." Traci shrugged. "But I suppose that's better than having nothing at all to do."

"I hope you won't be too busy to come out here to visit." Katie wiggled her eyebrows at her mom.

"And miss my beautiful granddaughter? I'll be out here as often as I can." She crossed her arms in a petulant pout. "As long as you don't require me to spend my time sticking stars to the ceiling without even a decent cup of coffee."

"Oh!" Katie jumped up as quickly as she could and offered her mother a hand up. "Why didn't you say so? Come into the living room. I'll go start the pot." Switching off the projection machine, she trotted out.

As she wandered to the door, Traci placed a hand on the jamb and turned to look up at the star stickers on the ceiling again. "Maybe I'll take you up on that, too. Not just yet, though. Not just yet." Smiling, she shook her head and disappeared into the hallway.


	14. Chapter 14

Lying on her back, her head on a soft pillow, Traci stared at the TV without really seeing it. Since the nurses always turned the lights down low in the room at night, the TV was really the only thing she could see, but it couldn't hold her attention; she mostly had it on just for a little noise. Most of the time, she found her thoughts just wandering, and she expected that would happen a lot more as time went on. She had overheard the doctor talking to Katie, and he had said to expect that her mind would get fuzzier and fuzzier over the next two weeks, and that she would remain fully lucid only for a few more days. It angered her that he didn't tell _her_ that.

She was weak enough now that anything tired her out, even scrolling through the pictures of her family and her life on the tablet. Jason had urged her to see the doctor a long time ago, but she had put it off, and by the time they found it, the cancer had spread so much that they had trouble figuring out exactly where it had started. Two more weeks now, two weeks of her brain slowly shutting down, followed closely by the rest of her body. _Ah, I had a good long life, a wonderful family…_ she tried to tell herself. She was supposed to be philosophical about it all, right? Then why was she so terrified?

A light knock on the door startled her. At this time of night, her children, grandchildren, and friends should all be home, and the hospice nurses usually didn't come by past ten unless their monitors showed something was wrong. Turning her head slowly, she saw the door crack open and a familiar voice called softly. "Traci?"

She wasn't sure why, but that voice melted away all the fear in her heart. "Doctor?" It came out as barely a whisper. "Doctor, is that you?"

The opening widened and the Doctor slipped in, then pushed the door closed. He smiled tenderly. "Of course it's me." He a pulled chair over next to the bed and sat down, taking her hand. His skin was cool.

"Oh, don't look at me. I look horrible." She covered her face with her free hand.

"Nonsense. You look brilliant." Removing her hand from her face, she gazed up at him. His eyes shone as they took in her entire form, from her gray hair and gaunt face, down to her toes hidden under blanket. He truly did see her as brilliant, even in this old, sick body.

"You look just the same, as always." Not a day older, though his eyes… They had always been ancient and haunted, but now, they were trying to hide a new, fresh despair. She longed to ask him what happened, to try to comfort him, to help him, but she couldn't summon up the courage. She squeezed his hand. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

He grinned, that same impish grin. "You can't get rid of me that easily." The smile vanished, and he sniffed before continuing. "Besides, you know what I'm about to ask you."

Traci's face crinkled in a sad smile. "A little late for that. What's the point of changing if I'm just going to be old and die? I might as well spend my last days here, with my family and friends."

He straightened up and rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, there's more to it than that. I admit that I don't know what happens if you change back with the cancer in your body. I suspect that it would stay with you, and there's nothing I can do about it." Squeezing her hand, he attracted her gaze and held it, his eyes dark. "But death is not the end for a Time Lady."

Traci frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well," and he seemed to gather his courage during the pause the drawled word gave him, "when we die, we don't. We change. Every cell reforms, and we become a new person. Same memories, same person deep down, but a different face and a different persona. This doesn't have to be the end for you."

Traci stared at him, barely comprehending his unbelievable statements. At length, she rasped, "What? What did you say?"

He stroked her hand, then held her gaze as he spoke. "We don't die. We regenerate. Our faces and bodies change, and we become different people, though we still retain our memories and identities. We can do this twelve times, before we die for good."

Her eyes widened, and if she had had the strength, she would have pulled her hand away from his. "I wouldn't die? But I'd become someone else?"

He nodded. "Yes. But you also would still be you. You'd remember everything about your past lives."

This was too absurd to believe. "And you've done this?"

"Ten times now. I've lived through ten different lifetimes."

"That's just ridiculous," she spat, and for a moment, she sounded like she was twenty-six years old again. "I don't believe you." She turned her head away from him, trying to conceal the tears forming in her eyes.

"It's true. One lifetime can last a thousand years or more. Thirteen means ten thousand years isn't uncommon."

"Ten thousand years." The idea of that long a time period was incomprehensible to her. "More than a hundred times longer than I've lived."

"Yes."

"But I'd be someone else. Not even who I was before."

"Yes."

 _No._ It was too incredible to believe, becoming a different person and living for that long. But the Doctor had done it, and he had never lied to her before, not about the important things; if he said it was true, then it was true. But why did this idea terrify her? Here he was offering her hope, offering her life, and it was the scariest thing in the world. Why?

"What's it like?" she finally asked. "Changing. Becoming a different person." She heard him exhale heavily before he spoke.

"It feels like… it feels like what I imagine dying is like. I mean, since I haven't died, I wouldn't know. But, who I am disappears, no longer exists, and I'm someone else. I've been nine different men before, and I still remember being them, and remember their lives, but I'm me and they're not. And yet they _are_ me." He sniffed. "I really haven't done a very good job of explaining all of this, have I?"

Traci turned her head back towards him, and though tears streaked her face, she was smiling. "You never do." She took a moment to gaze at him, those ancient eyes in that amazingly young face, the same face from over fifty-five years before. "You know, you told me something like that a long time ago, about when you were John Smith."

"Did I? I suppose you're right." Pensive, his eyes unfocused as he remembered. "The process of reverting was similar in many ways to regeneration, now that I think about it. I guess you could say I've lived through eleven different lifetimes, then." He quirked a tiny smile.

She glanced at the bedside table. "I have the watch here, you know. It's been my companion all my life."

Reaching over, the Doctor pulled the table's drawer open and fished out the watch. He placed it in Traci's hand and closed her fingers over it. She moved her hand up until it rested with the watch over her heart. Gazing up at the Doctor, she could see that he was holding his breath, awaiting her decision, and that he was keeping his expression carefully neutral. The shake of her head was barely noticeable.

"I can't."

The Doctor's face fell, and for a moment, she could feel his despair and loneliness, like a cloud surrounding him. Then, he reasserted his control, his expression closing him off from her. He patted her arm.

"Of course not. Quite right."

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I really can't." She tried to reach for him, but her arm felt too heavy.

"No, you're right. I shouldn't have expected anything else."

Traci sighed. "I've had such a good life. A wonderful family, and friends. Alex. I still miss him. My beautiful Jason and Katie. And Mikey. Oh, it sounds silly to say I'd be throwing that away if I opened the watch. But it feels like it didn't mean anything at all, if I turn my back on them and leave like that..."

Shaking his head, he interrupted her. "Traci, you don't have to explain."

"But I do. To be fair to you. You've been with me all my life. My most faithful friend. Even when I was horrible to you." She paused, trying to relieve the tightness in her chest. "But, being human is all I know. I like being human. I don't know what a Time Lady is. I'm scared I won't like being one. I really don't want…" She stopped herself from finishing the sentence, but it was too late.

"You really don't want to be like me."

She looked anywhere except at him. "I didn't say that."

"But it's what you were going to say." He paused, giving her a chance to speak, but she didn't refute him. "You don't want to be the last member of your species. You don't want to be a stranger in every land you step foot on. You don't want to spend thousands of years wandering the universe with no purpose, no reason for being, watching everyone around you grow old and die." He took a deep breath, but it sounded more like a sob. "You want a home, a family, to belong somewhere, even if it's only for a few more days."

He reached out and covered her hand, watch, and heart with his. "Believe me, I understand."

Traci swallowed, her throat dry. She wanted to throw her arms around him, cradle him like she had once done her children, and her grandchildren, when they were hurt or sad, but all she could do was put her hand on his arm. "How can you stand it?"

"I've been doing it for so long, that's just who I am now. But you're not me." His tongue flicked over his lips. "You're right. You wouldn't like it, you'll hate every minute of it, and you'll hate me for doing it to you. I couldn't bear that. You're doing the right thing."

They sat in silence, each lost in thought for a few minutes. Traci spoke again first. "I can hear it. I can hear the watch."

"Yes, I'm sure you can."

"It's crying for me. It's calling out. It's desperate." Tears began to fill her eyes again. "Can you… can you take it away? I don't want to hear it anymore."

He nodded. Picking up the watch, he clutched it, tapping his fist to his lips before dropping it into his pocket.

"Thank you." Her whole body relaxed as the keening in her mind silenced. "Doctor?"

He took her hand again and sandwiched it in both of his. "Yes, Traci?"

"I'm so scared."

"I'm here. I'll always be here for you."

"I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I can't be there for you."

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

In the morning, Jason and Katie were appalled to find a strange man in their mother's room, sitting by her side, holding her hand, and chatting with her quietly. When they tried to have him removed, she insisted that he stay, saying that he was her longtime best friend, even though her children had never seen him before and Jason swore the man was younger than himself. Mom called him "the Doctor," though the nurses claimed they had never seen him treat any of the hospice patients before.

Another thing that didn't endear him to them was that he stayed with Mom far more than they did, apparently remaining there with her all day and overnight, every night, though the nurses never saw him eat or sleep. When the family was around, he made himself scarce, usually disappearing for a while or reading a book in the lounge, but they found that Mom wouldn't go an hour without asking for him, at which point he would return and politely wait in a corner if anyone else was in the room. He grated on their nerves, especially Jason's, but they resolved to let him stay if it made Mom happy.

This didn't stop Katie from keeping an eye on him, though. She took it upon herself to check up on her mother while the Doctor was sitting with her, and she stood outside the door to see if she could hear what they were talking about. She found that for the most part, the Doctor sat by the bed and told Mom stories, sometimes in third person and sometimes in first person, but they were all about distant planets and civilizations, or tales of the distant past or the far future. He'd tell her a story about nefarious aliens and blaster cannons, and follow it with a dull political tale of lords and ladies administering laws as the seneschals of the universe, and then the next would be a silly story about meeting some king or famous celebrity from centuries past. This surprised Katie: her mother had shown no interest in science fiction and fantasy her whole life, yet she listened to the Doctor with rapt attention.

Traci's faculties began to fail after a few days. At first, she got easily confused, but she soon degraded into long periods of sleep with a few waking hours of staring at nothing. Still, the Doctor remained by her side as long as the family would let him, and still, he continued to tell her stories, long after Katie was sure her mother no longer heard him.

A few days after Traci spoke her last words, her nurse notified the family that she was in her last moments. As her children, grandchildren, and close friends entered her room, the Doctor rose from his chair by her bed and silently slipped out. He wandered to the hospice's little garden and stood there admiring the flowers, one hand in his jacket pocket, clutching a brass pocket watch.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

The Doctor knew he had to be as invisible as possible at the funeral. It certainly was not in his nature to be silent or inconspicuous, but even he could tell that his mere presence would irk Traci's children. Thus, under a tight black suit, he wore a royal blue shirt, a black waistcoat, and a black tie, with a brass pocket watch in the fob pocket on a silver chain, and on his feet were his best black trainers. Upon entering the church, he signed the registry, then joined the line for the viewing.

He stood at the casket, gazing at Traci, longer than was politely necessary. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a strip of crimson cloth embroidered with golden swirls and laid it beside her. He had torn it from his own robes: while he had never been fond of them and hadn't even looked at them for over two centuries, it felt like a stab in the hearts when he realised he would never have occasion to wear them again. He stroked her hand one last time, then retreated to the farthest, darkest corner of the church.

At the conclusion of the service, the Doctor slipped out through the crowd, but he hadn't gotten more than a few steps out of the church doors when someone called his name. He turned to see Katie trotting up to catch him.

"Doctor, can I have word with you, please?"

"Of course." He schooled his expression to be friendly but solemn. "It was a lovely service."

"Please tell me. What were you to her, to my mom?"

"Just a friend. For quite a long time, but just a friend. That's all."

Crossing her arms over her plain black dress, Katie frowned, her disbelief evident.. "Just a friend? That doesn't make sense. We've never seen you before, never heard of you, and then you appear in the hospice and spend days and nights sitting by her bedside. It doesn't make sense at all."

"You sound just like your mother." His smile was tender. "I've known her for years. I never visited her much, just here and there. And I just thought, she needed someone to be there, when you lot couldn't be."

"You told her stories."

Shaking his head, he waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, to keep her entertained, to keep her mind off things. That's all."

Biting her lip, she studied his face, then shifted, toying with the clutch in her hand. "I don't know who you are, but I want to thank you. I think you made my mom's last days very comfortable." She offered her hand, and he took it, shaking it with both of his.

"You are welcome, Katie. Your mother was a wonderful woman. She loved you and your brother more than anything, and wouldn't have had her life any other way, even for the universe." Flashing a brilliant smile, he nodded once, then turned and strode down the path to the street.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

When the time rotor ground to a halt, the Doctor walked down the ramp and opened the doors. The cloud of Mutter's Spiral stretched across the deep, perfect blackness of space. With two fingers, he dug into his fob pocket and pulled out the pocket watch, unclipping the chain from his waistcoat. Tracing each of the etched symbols on the watch with the tip of his finger, he mouthed her long, complicated name, then smiled and shook his head. Gazing out into the empty void, his eyes roamed over the entire panorama as if searching for some treasure long lost. He took a deep breath, steadying himself, then held the watch out in front of him, on the palm of his hand, in solemn, personal ritual.

"Here, Traci. This is where Gallifrey should be. This is where your life should have been. I am sorry that I took that from you. I hope... I hope that you lived the life that you wanted." He opened the watch and a burst of golden energy streamed from it, out of the doors of the TARDIS, disappearing into space. He then gently lobbed the watch after it. "You're home again."

Stepping back, he closed the doors and walked up to the console. He stroked the TARDIS tenderly, then drew in a breath.

"Now it's my turn."

With a grim expression of determination, he strode around the console, setting coordinates and executing the pre-flight. After a final nod, he flipped the large lever toggle and braced himself against the railings for the journey to the Ood Sphere.

* * *

 **Author's Note** : Thank you for reading!


End file.
